India's economy grows 1.6% in first 3 months

By Ovunc Kutlu

ANKARA (AA) - India's economy expanded by 1.6% in the January-March period of this year, but it contracted 7.3% during the full fiscal year 2020-21 due to the novel coronavirus, according to the country's Central Statistics Office (CSO) on Monday.

India, one of the G20 countries, saw its economy expand in two consecutive quarters with that result after gross domestic product (GDP) growth came at 0.5% in the third quarter of the fiscal year 2020-21, which was the October-December period of last year.

Its deficit for the 2020-21 full fiscal year, which ended on March 31, stood at 9.3% of GDP. Infrastructure output increased 56.1% in April from the same month of last year.

The country still has a long way to go for complete recovery from the pandemic after it saw a growth rate of 4% in the full fiscal year 2019-20.

The number of new COVID-19 cases in India has spiked recently, while the lack of vaccinations has taken a toll.

Since the start of the pandemic, more than 28 million cases carried the country to second place, above Brazil and behind the US, according to Maryland's Johns Hopkins University data.

The country saw almost 330,000 deaths, coming third in the world, the data shows.