The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has said that the country`s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth is unlikely to exceed 5.25 per cent this year since little has happened in terms of reforms and that deficits were `spinning out of control`.
"The combined fiscal deficit of Centre and states is rapidly spinning out of control. The Centre`s deficit for 2000-01 overshot the target and will probably be around 5.2 to 5.3 per cent. Adding off-balance sheet items like the oil pool deficit and public sector losses, the total deficit will lift to over 11 per cent of the GDP," CII said in its study on `Study of the Economy`.

This is worse than 1991-92 and is close to the disaster mark of 1990-91, it added.

"Given the current economic outlook, domestic as well as global, and the state of economic governance at the Centre and states, we don`t see any major upturn till 2001-02 end," it said, adding even if there was flurry of reforms in the second half of the year, it is unlikely that their impact would be evident until the first half of 2002-03.

CII`s estimate is even lower than the revised forecast of 5.6 per cent of the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), while Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) had scaled down the GDP growth for the current fiscal to 5.2 per cent. Buraeu Report