India faces deepening slowdown

With the slowest pace of growth in four years in the first quarter of this fiscal year, India is facing a deepening slowdown amid widespread pessimism brought by a falling rupee and slumping stock market, said local newspaper Economic Times on Saturday.

India's GDP grew by 4.4 percent in the first quarter of the current fiscal year from April to June, the lowest since the global meltdown started in 2008 and the third straight sub-5 percent quarterly growth.

The Central Statistical Office said Friday that services slowed and manufacturing contracted, making the growth short of forecast of 4.7 percent. Services grew 6.1 percent, industry contracted by 0.8 percent while agriculture rose 2.7 percent.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made a rare intervention in Parliament on Friday, promising to revert the economic slump within this year, while admitting that the country is facing a very difficult economic situation.

Madan Sabnavis, chief economist at CARE Ratings, told the newspaper that the future remains gloomy and that the second quarter would remain as bleak as the first.