Recent reforms helped Indian economy exit ‘Fragile 5’ to become ‘Fabulous 5’: Rajnath

Defence minister Rajnath Singh on Saturday said that the Indian economy has now exited the ‘Fragile 5’ category to join the league of the “Fabulous 5” and over the past eight-and-a-half years with a size of USD 3.5 trillion the country has become the fifth largest global economy.
Participating at industry body FICCI’s annual general meeting here, he said: “In nine years, the Indian economy has now come out of the Fragile 5 category to become Fabulous 5.” This bullish growth outlook for the Indian economy, Singh, said he believes is due to “procedural and structural” reforms introduced by the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The term Fragile 5 was coined by a Morgan Stanley analyst in 2013 and refers to a set of five emerging countries, including India, whose economy was not doing well. The other four countries are Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, and Turkey.
In his address at the FICCI event today, the defence minister also referred to the Morgan Stanley Managing Director’s recent newspaper article in which he projected that India is set to be the third-largest economy by 2027, with its GDP more than doubling to USD 8.5 trillion over the next 10 years. Earlier in his address, the defence minister spoke at length about how India and China’s economies fared in the past seven-odd decades and how economic reforms in both countries shaped the economic prospect.
“When the revolution took place in China in 1949 and a new system came into existence, their GDP was lower than that of India’s and later was more or less of the same size till 1980,” he said. Further, giving reference to the 1980s, he told the gathering how India’s economy in terms of size fell below Number 10 at that point in time. “Communism was prevailing in China and socialism in India at that time (the 1980s). During this period when India’s economy was out of the list of Top 10 economies. During the same period, China took a new turn and initiated several economic reforms. In India, we too started our economic reforms in 1991. But China in such a short span of time had a long leap and left behind not just India but the US too in the economic race,” Singh said.
Subsequently, in his address, he spoke about the resurgence in the Indian economy at the dawn of the 21st century.
“India’s return to the list of Top 10 economies happened in the 21st century… but everyone still felt the country was not growing in line with its capability and as per people’s aspirations,” Singh said, adding that it was in 2014 a big change took place in the country with Narendra Modi being elected as the prime minister. “When he became the prime minister in 2014, India was the 9th largest major economy and the size of the economy was approximately USD 2 trillion…In eight-and-a-half years, our economy is now at around USD 3.5 trillion and has become the 5th largest economy,” the defence minister said. Singh highlighted that there was a record Foreign Direct Investment in the country despite the Covid pandemic. The defence minister pointed out that FDI worth more than USD 83 billion arrived in India in one year and the country’s foreign exchange reserves is more than USD 561.
He said, all the major economies of the world are facing an inflationary crisis, however, inflation rate is less in India in comparison to other countries.