NEW DELHI: Even as the GDP growth for the first quarter of current fiscal stood at 7.8 per cent, a sharp fall from the corresponding period of last year, when it was 13.1 per cent, government said on Thursday that India’s growth is better than several economies.

“India’s quarterly GDP growth towers over that of many other economies.The government and the RBI are comfortable in holding on to their 2023-24 GDP growth forecast of 6.5 per cent,” chief economic adviser V Anantha Nageswaran said, while reacting to the GDP numbers.

“It is good to know that states are also joining the capex creation bandwagon that the central government has been championing for some time,” he said. Nageswaran added that private capital formation has in fact taken off.

“Overall, there is no real cause for concern about inflation spiralling out of control,” he said.

“Passenger air traffic is no more an indicator of just urban demand, but for overall national demand as a whole,” Nageswaran noted.

The chief economist informed that construction sector will continue to expand in the coming quarters and years.

India’s April-June construction sector growth stands at 7.9 per cent as against 10.4 per cent in January-March and 16 per cent in April-June 2022.