India inching closer to China in growth rate: World Bank report

India is fast catching up with China's economic growth rate amid a fragile global economy as high-income countries continue to suffer from volatility and slow growth, the World Bank said in a latest report released on Tuesday. HT reports. Shrinking gap

India is fast catching up with China's economic growth rate amid a fragile global economy as high-income countries continue to suffer from volatility and slow growth, the World Bank said in a latest report released on Tuesday.

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By 2015, the growth rate of China would be 7.9 % and that of India 7%, the World Bank said in the latest issue of the Global Economic Prospects 2013.

"We do expect India to inch closer to China and for a very, very good reason - not an analysis of what's happened over the last one year or two years, but a bit of a sweep of history," World Bank chief economist Kaushik Basu said.

The Bank has forecast that the Indian economy would recover from 5.1 % growth in 2012 to 6.1% growth in 2013.

Despite slow growth in high-income countries, prospects for the developing world remain solid - albeit between 1 and 2 percentage points slower than that in the pre-crisis period.

In order to regain those earlier growth rates, developing countries will need to focus on productivity-enhancing domestic policies, to assure robust growth in the long term, the report said.

The World Bank estimates global GDP grew 2.3% in 2012. Growth is expected to remain broadly unchanged at 2.4% in 2013, before gradually strengthening to 3.1% in 2014 and 3.3 % in 2015.

Growth in high-income countries remains weak, with their GDP expanding only 1.3% in 2012 and expected to remain slow at an identical 1.3 % in 2013.