India's Economic Surge: Crisil Raises GDP Forecast to 7% Amid Rate Cuts

Crisil has revised its GDP forecast for this fiscal with the first-half growth printing at a street-beating 8 per cent.

"We expect GDP to grow at 7 per cent in fiscal 2026, compared with 6.5 per cent in fiscal 2025," Crisil, a global, insights-driven analytics company, said in its report.

Domestic consumption is likely to drive growth, supported by benign inflation, GST rationalisation, and income tax relief.

However, US tariffs pose a risk to India's exports and investments, though the US-India trade deal remains monitorable, it cautioned.

GDP growth rose to a six-quarter high of 8.2 per cent year-on-year in the second quarter of fiscal 2026, from 7.8 per cent in the previous quarter, fuelled by robust consumption and aided by the GST rate rationalisation exercise of September 2025. Nominal GDP growth slowed to 8.7 per cent from 8.8 per cent.

Taking all factors into account, the RBI raised its GDP growth projection at 7.3 per cent for the full year, up by half a percentage point.

On the inflation front, Crisil expects CPI-based inflation to soften to 2.5 per cent in fiscal 2026 from 4.6 per cent in fiscal 2025.

"Sharper-than-expected fall in food inflation, healthy agriculture growth, benign global crude prices and GST rate cut benefits are expected to keep food inflation in check this fiscal," Crisil noted.

CPI or retail inflation eased to 0.3 per cent in October from 1.4 per cent in September, reaching the lowest point in the current CPI series. In November, however, it marginally inched up to 0.71 per cent (provisional).

The RBI revised its CPI inflation forecast for 2025-26 to just 2.0 per cent, down from previous estimates of 2.6 per cent.

In this backdrop, RBI's monetary policy would remain open for a rate cut amid benign inflation, but the RBI will likely stick to a data-dependent approach given the uncertain global environment, Crisil noted.

In line with expectations, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) cut policy rates by 25 basis points (bps) in its December meeting. It maintained its neutral policy stance. The RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra characterised India's current macroeconomic moment as a "rare goldilocks period", that currently marks high economic growth and exceptionally low inflation. The remarks came as the Reserve Bank announced its latest monetary policy decision, cutting the repo rate by 25 basis points to 5.25 per cent, after the three-day review meeting earlier this month.

Further, on crude oil, another key indicator of any economy, Crisil said they expect crude oil prices to average USD 60-65 per barrel in calendar year 2026, compared with an estimated USD 65-70 per barrel in 2025.

Brent crude oil prices fell to USD 63.6 per barrel average in November, 1.6 per cent lower month-on-month and 14.5 per cent lower year-on-year.

- ANI