NEW DELHI, Nov 12: Bad news is piling up for India’s economy with exports slumping, car sales tumbling and economists cutting growth forecasts amid job losses as the global financial downturn takes hold.

Until recently the country was confidently asserting that its mainly inward-looking economy and vast domestic market of 1.1 billion people would allow it to ride out turmoil stemming from the US-bred sub-prime crisis.

But Asia’s third-largest economy has joined the ranks of the wounded, with the odds of it emerging comparatively unscathed now significantly reduced as companies worry over their earnings.

“What began as a warning breeze spreading some chill in financial circles is now a full-fledged storm battering the real economy,” said T.N. Ninan, editor of the financial daily the Business Standard. And while this year will be difficult, analysts say 2009 looks worse.

“The larger-than-expected (credit) shock to the financial sector over the past couple of months and its knock-on effects on both domestic and external demand are responsible,” said Goldman Sachs economist Tushar Poddar.

Goldman Sachs this week cut its growth forecast for this fiscal year to March 2009 to 6.7 per cent -- among the lowest so far -- and said it expected the economy to expand by just 5.8 per cent next year.

Although strong by current Western standards, such growth is far shy of the double-digit levels economists say is needed to rescue hundreds of millions of Indians from poverty.—AFP