NEW DELHI: India’s economy ex­panded 7.3 per cent in the third quarter of the financial year, official data showed on Monday, suggesting it remains on track as the world’s fastest-growing major economy.

The year-on-year expansion in GDP for the three months to end-December represented a slowdown from the previous quarter but beat a 7.1pc median estimate forecast by economists in a Bloomberg survey.

The robust data will provide a boost for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, coming as India’s rightwing leader nears two years in power amid mounting calls to enact promised reforms.

India’s statistics ministry on Monday also forecast the economy would grow 7.6pc over the full year 2015-16.

It sharply revised up the growth rate for the previous two quarters, including raising the figure for the July-September quarter to 7.7pc, up from 7.4pc reported earlier.

However, several experts questioned the data, saying it did not tally with the signals coming from many sectors of the Indian economy.

“I’m absolutely surprised by this,” said Kunal Kundu, India Economist at Societe Generale in Bangalore, of the upward quarterly data revision.

“The growth they are talking about becomes all the more untenable on the face of what we are seeing in the coal sector, roads, freight, exports contracting for 13 months in a row,” he told AFP.

Modi has made boosting economic growth a priority since sweeping to power in May 2014 and has been buoyed in recent months by a growth rate that has exceeded that of powerhouse China.

But investors have raised concerns about the pace of promised economic reforms needed to create jobs for India’s tens of millions of young people.

The rupee is Asia’s worst-performing currency so far this year as global funds have pulled out of Indian stocks, according to Bloomberg.

“At face value these are extremely strong figures. The bigger doubts arise when we try to align the GDP data with what we know of the economy’s health from other sources,” analysts at Capital Economics said in a note, following Monday’s data.

“We should take the official GDP data, and the rate of growth they are suggesting, with a pinch of salt,” they said.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party-led government will present its next budget on February 29, with the private sector clamouring for tax reforms to simplify the current regime, among other demands.

Published in Dawn, February 9th, 2016