IMF cuts India's 2013 growth forecast to 6.5%

NEW DELHI: The International Monetary Fund on Monday cut India’s economic growth forecast to 6.5 per cent, down from its April projection of 7.2 per cent.
India’s growth has already been slowing, and fell to 6.5 per cent for the financial year ended March 2012, after hitting a nine-year low of 5.3 per cent in the March quarter.
The International Monetary Fund also cut its global growth forecast and warned that the outlook could dim further if policymakers in Europe do not act with enough force and speed to quell their region's debt crisis.
The IMF shaved its 2013 forecast for global economic growth to 3.9 per cent from the 4.1 per cent it projected in April, trimming projections for most advanced and emerging economies. It left its 2012 forecast unchanged at 3.5 percent.
"Downside risks to this weaker global outlook continue to loom large," the IMF said in an update of its World Economic Outlook. "The most immediate risk is still that delayed or insufficient policy action will further escalate the euro area crisis."
The global lender said advanced economies would only grow 1.4 percent this year and 1.9 percent in 2013.
It chopped its forecast for growth in emerging economies this year and next, projecting they will expand 5.9 per cent in 2013 and 5.6 per cent in 2012. Both figures are 0.1 percentage point lower than in April.
The IMF cut its growth forecast for the crisis-hit Eurozone to 0.7 per cent in 2013, while maintaining its projection of a 0.3 per cent contraction this year. It said it now believes Spain's economy will shrink both this year and next.
The IMF sharply revised down its growth projections for the United Kingdom to 0.2 percent this year and to 1.4 percent in 2013. In April, the fund said the UK economy would expand 0.8 percent in 2012 and 2.0 percent next year.
Moving in the right direction, but...
The fund praised measures adopted by European leaders at a summit in June as "steps in the right direction" but called for more fiscal and banking integration. It urged the creation of a pan-European deposit insurance guarantee program and a mechanism to resolve failing banks.
"The utmost priority is to resolve the crisis in the Eurozone," the IMF said.
It urged the ECB to provide ample liquidity to support banks under "sufficiently lenient conditions" and nudged the central bank to further ease monetary policy.
It made clear, however, that Europe was not the only risk to the outlook.
The IMF, which trimmed its US forecasts slightly, said concerns were rising over a political battle brewing in Washington over how to avoid painful automatic spending cuts and tax increases at the start of next year.
The United States faces what economists are calling a "fiscal cliff" with the scheduled expiration of Bush-era tax cuts and $1.2 trillion in automatic spending reductions - enough fiscal tightening to knock the still-weak US economy back into recession.
The nation is also expected to run into the statutory $16.4 trillion cap on its debt before the end of the year, raising the prospect of a default absent congressional action to raise it.
While financial markets believe Congress and the White House will find a way to avoid a fiscal train wreck, the IMF warned of the "potential for a significant adverse market reaction" if that consensus view began to falter.