ET

New Delhi, Feb 9: Indian economy is to grow at 7.1% in the current fiscal, its slowest pace in six years, an advance estimate of national income released today shows.

This is almost 2 percentage points below the previous fiscal (2007-2008) growth of 9% despite two rounds of fiscal stimulus packages announced by the center.

A 7.1% growth in this fiscal (2008-2009) means that the growth has been less than 6.5% in the second half of fiscal. The economy has grown by 7.8% in the first half of this fiscal against 9.3% a year ago.

Talking to ET, country's chief statistician Pronab Sen said ," The growth for the fiscal would be highly influenced by the growth rate in last quarter as it has a weight of more than 35% in the total gross domestic production for the year."

The growth rate of 7.1% in GDP during 2008-09 has mainly been due to growth rates of over 5% in the sectors of construction, trade hotels, transport and communication, financing, insurance, real estate and business services, and community, social and personal services.

Shubda Rao chief economist at Yes Bank said the stimulus packages announced will have a lagged impact and the economy will recover by October 2009.

D K Joshi, principal economist at CRISIL also pointed out that as the capacity of government to spend has eroded the fiscal stimulus measures will not have the decided effects.