Dinesh Dhamija

Cementing its place at the peak of global economic performance, India appeared in Franklin Templeton’s latest survey as the least likely of all major countries to suffer recession in 2024, with a zero per cent chance.

By contrast, Germany seems almost certain to plunge into recession, with a 73 per cent likelihood, followed by Italy on 63 per cent and the UK on 53 per cent. Canada (50 per cent) and the United States (45 per cent) are on a knife edge, while Australia (40 per cent), France (35 per cent) and South Africa (30 per cent) are all in areas of concern.

The emerging economies of China (15 per cent), Brazil (10 per cent) and Indonesia (2 per cent) fare best in this analysis, other than India, with Japan and South Korea (both 15 per cent) forming an Asian bloc of positive prospects. Nothing in life is ever guaranteed, however, so despite such high confidence, some Indian
commentators are more cautious. “Recession risks may reappear in 2024 due to…rising food and energy prices amidst lingering geopolitical tensions,” wrote Dr Kembai Srinivasa Rao in the Times of India. He nevertheless predicts growth of 7 per cent for 2024 and 6.5 per cent in 2025, far above that of most other economies.
What worries many economists in India, as in the rest of the world, is supply chain disruption from the Ukraine and Gaza conflicts, as we have seen in the Gulf of Aden, with attacks on commercial shipping. An escalation of the situation in Taiwan is also on economists’ radar, adding to the drumbeat of negativity against China on security and trade.

As the Times newspaper pointed out in a recent editorial, India’s elections later this month promise to deliver a new mandate for Narendra Modi, giving him the freedom to act more decisively in foreign and economic affairs. The Times predicted that he would use this freedom to cement ties with the United States and Europe, while reducing dependency upon Russian energy and countering Chinese influence in Asia. This may be wishful thinking, but it allies with the thesis in my latest book ‘The Indian Century’ that India has a large and growing role to play in global affairs, just as China’s economic star is fading, Russia has become an international pariah and Europe is suffering a demographic timebomb of an ageing population and stagnant growth.

By 2028, India is expected to have more than 600,000 High Net Worth Individuals, giving it the fourth largest private wealth market in the world. The value of the country’s stock market, meanwhile, overtook Hong Kong’s in January 2024 to become the world’s fourth-largest, worth more than $4 trillion. By the end of the decade, that figure is predicted to reach $10 trillion. There are always doubts about economic forecasts, but in the case of India, right now, there are remarkably few.

Dinesh Dhamija founded, built and sold online travel agency ebookers.com, before serving as a Member of the European Parliament. Since then, he has created the largest solar PV and hydrogen businesses in Romania. Dinesh’s latest book is The Indian Century – buy it from
Amazon at https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1738441407/