New Delhi: India’s economic growth for 2025-26 may turn out higher than the official estimate of 7.4% the First Advance Estimates released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), according to a research note from the State Bank of India (SBI).
The National Statistics Office’s (NSO) First Advance Estimates, released on Wednesday. It projected real GDP growth at 7.4% for FY26, up from 6.5% in 2024-25. However, SBI’s Ecowrap report suggests that the figure could be closer to 7.5%.
“Historically, the difference between RBI’s estimate and NSO’s estimate is always in the range of 20-30 bps and hence the 7.4% estimate of FY26 is quite expected and reasonable. We, however, believe that GDP growth for FY26 would be around 7.5% with upward bias. The second advance estimates, incorporating additional data and revisions, are scheduled to be released on February 27, 2026. So, all these numbers are expected to change with the base revision to 2022-23,” SBI’s Ecowrap report stated.
Manufacturing growth
The SBI report mentioned that with a robust manufacturing growth of 7.0% in FY26, Industry sector is expected to grow at 6.0%, compared to last year growth of 5.9%. Mining is expected to decelerate by 0.7% in FY26 as compared to a growth of 2.7% in FY25.
The second advance estimates, incorporating additional data and revisions, are scheduled to be released on February 27, 2026. So, all these numbers are expected to change with the base revision to 2022-23.
Imports have registered a growth of 9% in nominal terms but registered a growth of 14.4% in real terms. However, this is expected to moderate in FY27 given the outlook on energy prices, the report stated.
Fiscal Outlook 2025-26
On the fiscal front, Fiscal deficit at the end of Nov’25 stood at Rs 9.8 lakh crore or 62.3% of BE. We believe that even though the tax revenue are likely to be lower than the budgeted for FY26, non-tax revenue will be on the higher side thereby not impacting the overall receipts much.
SBI Ecowrap estimates Total expenditure to be lower, leading to fiscal deficit of Rs 15.85 lakh crore compared to the budgeted Rs 15.69 lakh crore. With the new GDP figure fiscal deficit as % of GDP is likely to remain unchanged at 4.4%, it stated.