India continues to pull ahead of China as the world’s fastest-growing big economy on a surge in third-quarter manufacturing output.
For the three months ended Sept. 30, India’s gross domestic product grew 7.4% from a year earlier, according to government data released Monday.
This matched the 7.4% median forecast of economists polled by The Wall Street Journal. It was a significant jumped from the 7.0% growth posted in the second quarter. China’s GDP grew 6.9% in the third quarter.
Over the period from July to September, manufacturing output jumped 9.3%, up from 7.2% in the second quarter. Growth in financing and insurance services growth climbed to 9.7% from 8.9%.
However, growth in farm production only edged up to 2.2% from 1.9% the previous quarter and growth slowed in trading and hotel services to 10.6% from 12.8%
As one of the major economies of the emerging markets, known as the BRICS, India stood out as an outperformer, while Brazil, Russia and China have all struggled this year. The Indian people seem much more optimistic about the future following last year’s election of Minister Narendra Modi.
Modi ran on a platform of making it easier to do business in India.
“We believe that the Indian economy will remain a growth outperformer in Asia in 2016,” Chua Han Teng, Asia analyst at BMI Research told the Wall Street Journal. “Macroeconomic prospects are brighter under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration due to an improvement in the business environment.”