India to Overtake Britain and France, Become 5th Largest Economy in 2018: Report

Indian economy is set to overtake that of Britain and France to become the fifth largest in the world in 2018, according to the World Economic League Table (WELT) 2018. The year will be the first time when the Indian economy will overtake the UK and France economies in real money dollar terms, the ninth-edition of the report released on Dec. 26 by London-based Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) shows.

The world economic league table has forecasts for 192 countries up to the year 2032. The report adds that the Indian economy has been larger than that of the majority of Western economies for most of history. “It was only in 1906 that the UK economy overtook the Indian economy, while the French economy was smaller than the Indian economy until 1951. India will become the world’s third largest economy by 2032,” says the report, which gives the annual growth, inflation and exchange rate forecasts for each of the 192 economies over the next 15 years. The countries cover an estimated 99.8 per cent of the world’s gross domestic product.

The forecasts say that by 2030, three of the world’s top four economies will be Asian — China, India and Japan. By 2032, they will be joined in the top 10 by Korea and Indonesia. Taiwan and Thailand will enter the top 20 while the Philippines and Pakistan will feature in the top 25.

The growth in the Indian economy will also drive the rest of South Asia. Its other South-Asian counter parts like Pakistan will rise from the 41st position in 2017 to 25th in 2032, while Bangladesh will rise from the 43rd position to 31st in 2032.

The growing importance of #Asia’s major economies will continue in 2018 and beyond – @Cebr_uk https://t.co/4e3yQ3JExM @business pic.twitter.com/kPXACnlGXl

— AsianDevelopmentBank (@ADB_HQ) December 26, 2017

About China, the report says that the country will overtake the U.S. economy in 2030. “This remains a remarkable achievement from an economy that was only 12% the size of the U.S. economy as recently as 2000,” it adds. Since the impact of U.S. President Donald Trump on trade has been less severe than expected, the report says that the United States will retain the number one spot for a year longer, till 2029, than it was anticipated in the 2017 Cebr report.

It highlights how construction and infrastructure projects will change the shape of the world by 2032. Indian infrastructural projects will rebuild the world’s most populous country, which will spend an amount as large as Canada’s GDP on infrastructure. Key projects include the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor, the Indian Smart Cities Project and more than 80,000 km of new highways.