
How the Indian economy fared in 2024, in 9 charts

Summary
The Indian economy slowed, inflation rose, and personal loan growth fell, but optimism about India’s future remained high. Here’s a review of the economy through charts.The year 2024 kept governments across the world on tenterhooks, with more than 60 countries, including India, holding elections, injecting uncertainty about how the outcomes would shape future fiscal, monetary, and trade policies.
The Indian economy faced several challenges in 2024, from slowing growth to stubborn inflation to risks associated with personal loan growth. None of these issues was new, but several remained unresolved yet again. While the fight against inflation made the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) cautious about easing monetary policy, economic activity and capital expenditure slowed, making balancing growth and price rises tougher.
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Though the Indian economy is set to miss the goal of becoming a $5 trillion economy by 2025, optimism remains high for the 100th year of India’s independence–2047.
The Indian economy slowed significantly in the second quarter of the current fiscal year, even after some private final consumption expenditure recovery was visible. However, the slowdown should not come as a complete surprise as it was evident from gross value added (GVA) growth in 2023 when it was sharply lower than GDP growth due to lower subsidies. GDP differs from GVA by excluding the government’s subsidy outgo and including indirect tax collections.
The good news was India’s gross fixed capital formation (GFCF), a proxy for private and public infrastructure expenditure, reached a multi-year high, possibly boosted by the Centre’s capex push in the post-covid era. However, capex support took a hit this fiscal year due to election-related disruptions and is set to miss the ₹1.1 trillion budget aim.
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Stubborn inflation
Inflation remained a pain point for the fifth year, but most of the price pressures in 2024 came from vegetables. Even as inflation, excluding vegetables, remained under 4%, it tied the central bank’s hands. While rapid increases in prices in Western countries finally saw a rapid decline in 2024, India’s inflation remained in the 4-8% range, mainly due to volatility in food prices. As inflation eased in Western countries, several central banks started slashing key policy rates during the year. India is expected to start rate cuts from February if seasonal trends bring vegetable prices down amid subdued growth.
Amid a closer watch by the RBI, personal loan growth slowed down, which may impact economic activities in the country.
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Despite all the unresolved challenges, optimism ran high about India’s future, with key people expressing great hopes for India by 2047.
However, India will miss its ambitious $5 trillion economy target in 2025 and may reach the level two years later in 2027, signalling a tough road before 2047 ambitions are realized.