India will overtake China in the future

[sensenreason]

India to overtake China in GDP growth in 2010 - World Bank

Add CaptionsThe World Bank has projected 5.1 per cent growth for India in 2009, revising its earlier projection of 4 per cent.

In its Global Development Finance Report 2009 released yesterday, the bank has also projected an 8 per cent growth for India in 2010, overtaking China`s expected growth of 7.7 per cent.

However, the developing countries are expected to grow by only 1.2 per cent this year, after 8.1 per cent growth in 2007 and 5.9 per cent growth in 2008.

The Indian economy had grown by 6.7 per cent in 2008 against the World Bank`s estimate of 6.1 per cent.

`When China and India are excluded, GDP in the remaining developing countries is projected to fall by 1.6 per cent, causing continued job losses and throwing more people into poverty,` the report said.
The bank has urged rich countries to boost the flow of credit to developing nations to help speed up economic recovery. ``Developing countries can become a key driving force in the recovery, assuming their domestic investments rebound with international support, including a resumption in the flow of international credit,`` said Justin Lin, World Bank chief economist and senior vice president, Development Economics.

Despite the gloomy picture for this year, the bank says growth in developing countries, led by India and China, could reach 4.4 per cent in 2010 and 5.7 per cent by 2011.

The Reserve Bank of India itself has put the possible growth numbers at six per cent - 0.9 percentage points more than the estimates of the World Bank.

Amidst global economic recession and financial-market fragility, net private capital inflows to developing countries fell to $707 billion in 2008, a sharp drop from a peak of $1.2 trillion in 2007. International capital flows are projected to fall further in 2009, to $363 billion.

The report continues to sound bleak on the global economic prospects, which remain `unusually uncertain` despite recent signs of improvement in some parts of the world. Barring a few countries, including India and China, the bank has cut 2009 growth projections for all other economies and expects the world economy to contract by 2.9 per cent this year.

`Developing countries are expected to grow by only 1.2 per cent this year, after 8.1 per cent growth in 2007 and 5.9 per cent in 2008. When China and India are excluded, GDP in the remaining developing countries is projected to fall by 1.6 per cent, causing continued job losses and throwing more people into poverty,` the report said.

On the outlook for India and South Asia, the Bank further said, ``The relatively rapid recovery in regional activity to close to potential output growth comes despite the weak recovery projected elsewhere and reflects the lagged impact of recent monetary policy easing - with some potential for further interest rate cuts.``

The bank said a stable government at the centre and its reform agenda has improved investor sentiment and could yield an even stronger recovery in investment demand.

Foreign direct investment inflows into India fell from 4.6 per cent of gross domestic investment in the third quarter of 2008 to 0.7 per cent in the fourth quarter as result of the downturn, the report said.

Remittances, which account for 3 per cent of India`s foreign exchange inflows, may deteriorate in 2009, it added. In dollar terms, India received $27 billion (Rs1.3 trillion) in remittance inflows in 2007, the highest among developing countries.
Fiscal stimulus measures, the World Bank said, should however provide a boost to household income and spending, though there is limited space for further stimulus.

In 2008-09, the fiscal stimulus provided by India amounted to about 3.5 per cent of India`s GDP. ``As a consequence, the public sector deficit is projected to have increased from 5.8 per cent of GDP (gross domestic product) in 2007 to 9.8 per cent in 2008 and to over 12 per cent as of early-2009,`` the bank said.
It added that large fiscal deficits may lead to cuts in development spending and may put a threat to long-term growth prospects by crowding out private investment and leading to higher interest rates. ``Growing public sector obligations are also likely to translate into increased debt ratios, raising the risk of default,`` the World Bank said. Central government debt represents close to 55 per cent of India`s GDP, the report said.

The report calls on governments around the world to be vigilant when drawing up strategies to reverse the recent expansionary monetary and fiscal policies once the world economy takes off.

The bank has urged rich countries to boost the flow of credit to developing nations to help speed up economic recovery. ``Developing countries can become a key driving force in the recovery, assuming their domestic investments rebound with international support, including a resumption in the flow of international credit,`` said Justin Lin, chief economist at the World Bank.

The world`s gross domestic product, may shrink by 2.9 per cent and global trade is expected to plunge by 9.7 per cent this year, the World Bank said. In March, it had predicted a 1.7 per cent global contraction.

Source(s)

 

[aimarraul]

congrats，but you should convince 1.1B indian ,not few chinese here

 

[DaRk WaVe]

congrats，but you should convince 1.1B indian ,not few chinese here

heheee right & our Indian member change the heading to India to overtake China in GDP growth in 2010, not India will take over China

 

[sensenreason]

China, India and the “3D Advantage”
Thomas L Friedman writing in yesterday’s NYT (“Tough Choices” or “Learning to Keep Learning” Pg 7, 13th/14th Dec ’06) about the many changes that China will need to make to get into the “rank of innovation-oriented countries by 2020″ had a very interesting comment to make:

“…I still believe it is very hard to produce a culture of innovation in a country that censors Google – which for me is a proxy for curtailing people’s ability to imagine and try anything they want,”

As Friedman goes on to say, “You can command K-12 education. But you can’t command innovation. Rigor and competence, without freedom, will only take China so far…”

And this is where India may have an edge with its vibrant democracy, a culture of “questioning” and its tradition of free thinking…all of which gets turbo-charged when coupled with our enormous diversity…

In the long-running discussion of India vs. China, India’s “3D Advantage” (Democracy, Demographics and Diversity) may well prove to be decisive.

 

[sensenreason]

heheee right & our Indian member change the heading to India to overtake China in GDP growth in 2010, not India will take over China

While till yesterday, I had interest in this topic..but Ive vowed to post series of facts to prove India will overtake China...This is a first in the series of the same....

 

[sensenreason]

congrats，but you should convince 1.1B indian ,not few chinese here

I dont care whether I convince Chinese, Pakistani or Indians...it doesnt matter...Facts do..and inshallah should post only facts.

Happy.

 

[sensenreason]

http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/2141955/
India: The Fastest Growing Telecom Market

India has emerged as the fastest growing telecom market in the world, attracting not just global service providers like Britian-based Vodafone but also big handset manufacturers like Finland's Nokia that not too long ago was reluctant to make an entry because of low volumes. For a country that stood at the bottom of the pyramid in terms of telecom penetration a decade ago, 2008 was a watershed when India's subscriber base topped 350 million users to make its network the second largest in the world after China, displacing the US.

Going by the recent data compiled by industry watchdog Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the growth is being powered with equal fervor by rural areas, once regarded as low-end, low-volume markets with modest purchasing power. The significant achievement was made possible by the mobile telephony segment of communications, which was once thought to be a gizmo for the rich, with a tariff of Rs.16.80 per call when the telecom revolution began in the country in the early 1990s.

But with tariff falling to less than 40 Indian paise a call and incoming calls becoming free, mobile telephony began to appeal to the masses. In fact, 2008 also saw Indian telecom operators add a whopping 8-10 million new subscribers to the network each month, making a host of global companies to look at the country as their next big market for growth. And the statistics speak for themselves. According to TRAI, the total number of telephone connections in the country reached 363.95 million at the end of Oct. 2008 against 256.55 million in the corresponding month last year.

This, despite the fact that the number of plain vanilla landlines in the country actually fell from 39.41 million in October 2007 to 38.22 million the same month last year. Tele-density shot up from a mere 12.7 percent in March 2006 to 31.5 percent on Oct. 31. India continues to be one of the fastest growing IT and telecom market. In 2008, India was ranked as the 14th highest IT spender and it is expected to move up to the 11th position by 2012. The projection by several leading global consultancies is that India's telecom network will overtake China's in the next 10 years.

"The telecom sector in India has registered a remarkable growth during the last few years propelled largely by the unprecedented growth of mobile telephony," said Nripendra Misra, TRAI's chairman, in a report obtained by Arab News. "Three years back, a target of 250 million telephone subscribers by 2007 was considered too ambitious, but we could achieve this target a few months ahead of schedule," Misra added.

Telecommunication access to rural India is going to be the most important development since the Green Revolution. Research analysts feel that mobile voice is overwhelmingly the engine of growth followed by next generation network, broadband and data. The sector, which will go through a major revamp with the launch of third generation (3G) mobile services, has seen a number of ups and downs in the recent past. A key development in the history of the telecom industry was when Bharti, in collaboration with 15 telecom players, signed a deal to build the first direct, high-bandwidth optical-fibre undersea cable system.

The international investor community also continued to bet on the Indian market. Norway-based Telenor, the world's seventh largest telecom operator, bought a new-generation telecom company Unitech Wireless by paying $1.29 billion for a 60 percent stake. Similarly, another start-up, Swan Telecom, which did not have a single subscriber, sold a 45-percent stake to the UAE's Etisalat for $900 million, taking the company's book value to $2 billion. Another major foreign inflow was announced when Japanese telecom giant NTT DoCoMo picked up 26 percent stake in Tata Teleservices for $ 2.7 billion.

Not only this, December 2008 also saw the much-touted third generation (3G) services being launched by the state-run telecom operator Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL). Under the brand 'Jaadu' (magic), MTNL ushered in the next wave of Indian telephony on Dec 11. With 3G and broadband wireless access (BWA) auctions a few days away, the government held a pre-bid conference to clarify on bidding related issues to the telecom operators and to make them aware of the rules of the game.

At present, every month, eight million new cell phone subscribers sign up for services in India. There are about 300 million cell phone users in India at present. This is expected to double to 500 million in just over two years. By 2012, one in every second Indian will be sporting a mobile phone, as the cell phone market is expected to expand to 600 million subscribers. The sector got a boost recently with the government granting licenses to over half a dozen players to operate services in multiple circles.

printer friendly version | 657 reads

 

[sensenreason]

Why India might overtake China – Keystone
Filed under: Indian Economy — battakiran @ 12:34 pm
Tags: China, Chindia, India

It has only been a few years since Asia bulls have been touting the arrival of the Chinese Century, citing that nation’s enormous potential.

Now, get ready for predictions of the India Century.

That, in fact, was the title of a recent white paper by the Chicago-based consultancy Keystone-India, founded by a group of top economists from Ernst & Young who believe that India is on track to surpass China in growth. “We believe this is India’s moment,” declares Keystone Chief Economist William T Wilson.

China has a two decade-long track record of 9.5% average annual growth, exports 10 times as much as India, and dwarfs India as a magnet for foreign investment.

By contrast, India has achieved an annual growth rate of 7% or higher only seven times in the past two decades. And largely because of its unruly politics and stifling bureaucracy, it wasn’t long ago that economists bemoaned the “Hindu growth rate,” implying the nation is simply culturally incapable of achieving high growth.


China - India

Even under Keystone’s projections, India wouldn’t match China’s current hypergrowth rates for at least another 15 years. And even by 2050, China’s economy would be bigger measured in US dollars.

But longer term, Keystone contends India will be in a stronger position. It projects that China’s average annual growth will peak at 8.8 per cent over the next five years, and then gradually trend downward to under 7 per cent in the 2020s and around 4% by the 2040s.

India’s annual growth is projected to rise to around 7.3 per cent by 2010 and stay over 7 per cent until the mid-2030s, and still be in the 6% range until 2050.

What’s more, Wilson contends that Keystone’s forecasts are conservative.

Why is Keystone so bullish? Some of the key reasons:

Demographics

The biggest reason India has more long-term growth potential is simply that its population is younger and is growing more quickly than China’s. Currently, China has 300 million more people than India.

But because of its very low birth rate, largely due to the one-child policy, China’s population is expected to peak at around 1.45 billion by 2030.

India’s population is expected to increase by 350 million by 2030, more new people than the US, Western Europe, and China combined. India will have 200 million more people than China by midcentury.

What’s more, China’s population is aging rapidly. As a result, the number of working-age Chinese is projected to peak in 2020 and start declining steadily thereafter, while India’s workforce will keep growing for at least four more decades.

However, India’s fertility rate also is declining, meaning future families will have fewer children to support and more to spend on consumption.

Development experts call this combination of a growing workforce and declining fertility a ‘demographic dividend,’ which helped power explosive economic growth in East Asia’s Tiger economies from the 1960s through the early 1990s.

Capital Efficiency

The big driver of China’s economic growth has been massive investment, equal to 40% to 45% of gross domestic product a year, an extraordinarily high rate on world standards?and twice the percentage of India’s.

In 2004, investment in China was equal to half of its $1.5 trillion in GDP. In that context, China’s 9.5% growth rate that year shouldn’t be too surprising.

“It is staggering how much investment was needed to power Chinese growth in recent years,” Wilson notes. “Any nation investing half of GDP in fixed-capital income looks a lot like pre-crisis Asia.”

India, however, gets much more bang for the rupee. It has achieved 6% average growth with an investment rate half that of China’s, around 22% to 23% a year.

Investment Growth

Many signs point to big increases in investment in India, Wilson says.

In fact, he estimates investment in India could reach 35% of GDP within a decade, which would enable it to match China’s 9% plus growth. One reason is that the savings rate in India rose from 23.5% of GDP in 2001 to 28.1% in 2004.

And because of its growing workforce and the decline in family size, India’s savings rate should continue to rise to a projected 37% in 20 years.

Since investment is highly correlated to domestic savings, that should translate into higher investment and economic growth.

Meanwhile, the rapidly aging population of China means that its savings rate also is likely to drop in the future, as it has in most other nations with graying workforces.

Second, India thus far has gotten by with minimal foreign investment. Keystone notes that in the past four years alone, China has drawn $200 billion more in foreign investment.

However, India is planning to open up many long-protected sectors that have great allure to foreign investors?and that could draw huge inflows of money.

They include telecom, where Indian demand now is growing even faster than China’s, commercial real estate, and department stores. Although some of the reforms have stalled recently due to domestic political opposition, Wilson believes the government will prevail.

“If you look at the institutional changes and the number of industries that have liberalised over the past five years, the pace has been phenomenal,? he says.

Wilson predicts India’s real estate sector will draw a huge influx of money from foreign hedge funds, and liberalisation of retail will be ‘the real big bang’ for the economy.

New Entrepreneurs

Indian industry so far has been led by many of the big business families and conglomerates that dominated when India was still a quasi-socialist, heavily regulated economy.

They generally have done a good job of taking advantage of new opportunities offered by liberalization since the early 1990s. But the more dynamic companies in India are smaller ones that are led by new generations of entrepreneurs who take greater risks or are more connected to the global economy.

These new companies also have more creative managers, argues Debashis Ghosh, another Keystone partner who worked at Ernst & Young.

Keystone focuses on researching mid-sized Indian companies with $10 million to $100 million in annual sales.

“The bigger companies are still led by oldschool types who used to depend on access to government and got huge when there was nobody else in the game.

“Because they had scale, foreigners had to deal with them,” says Ghosh.

“Now, though, the top talent from the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institutes of Management are flowing into the mid-sized sector. That is like getting a management team of all Wharton and Massachusetts Institute of Technology grads.”

As a result, he contends that the Indian companies of the future are more dynamic than those of China, where management tends to be weak.

Higher Productivity

India has averaged respectable productivity growth of 2.5% a year over the past two decades. But that can grow sharply, thanks to liberalization of many industries, a literacy rate that has risen from 18% in 1951 to 65% now, and India’s rising openness to foreign trade, which has jumped from 15% of GDP in 1991 to 26% now.

Manufacturing Surge China dwarfs India as a manufacturing power, especially for export.

And it will be a long time before India, with its inadequate infrastructure and components supply base, will be a serious export rival. But in recent years, India’s domestic manufacturing industry has been growing strongly.

What’s more, a number of Indian companies are especially strong in high-end manufacturing, such as auto parts, power generators, and medical equipment, that requires a lot of engineering.

In terms of quality and efficiency, several Indian auto parts companies are on par with the US.

“If you look at engineering work across the board, in industries from pharmaceuticals to telecom, what India is doing is an order of magnitude beyond what China is doing,” says Keystone’s Ghosh.

Anyone who visits both countries today may find it hard to imagine India overtaking China in economic performance.

But when you look at the fundamental drivers?growth in the workforce, fixed investment, and productivity — over the long run the prospect looks a lot more plausible.

 

[sensenreason]

China today said its economy in first three months of 2009 grew by 6.1 per cent, its lowest rate in over a decade, thus raising apprehensions about the communist nation losing its status as the world’s fastest growing economy to India.

While the official figures for growth in India’s gross domestic product during the first three months of 2009 is not available as yet, the country’s economy is estimated to have grown by 7.1 per cent in the fiscal ended 31 March.

Given a steeper decline than India in China’s GDP growth rate, which stood at 13 per cent in 2007 and fell to nine per cent in 2008, some experts opined that it would be interesting to watch which of the two economies grow faster going ahead.

Asked if China’s GDP growth rate could fall below that of India’s, Standard & Poor’s chief economist for Asia Pacific, Mr Subir Gokarn said over telephone that it was “quite likely in one particular quarter”, but on a yearly basis it might not be the case at least this year.

China News: Will India Overtake China?s Growth Rate? | China Digital Times (CDT)

 

[sensenreason]

IMF: India Better Off than China, Says Nobel Laureate
Because India depends less on exports than China, it should fare better during the global slump, says economics Nobel winner James Mirrlees
By Ashoke Nag

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Exports don't play as critical a role in India as they do in China. Which is why, China has been hit far harder by the meltdown than India. In fact, remittances from Indians living abroad are much more crucial for India.

"As things stand, India receives a huge quantum of remittances from Indians living and working in the Gulf region. And, the Gulf area has still not been impacted hugely by the recession. Therefore, one doesn't expect remittances into India to drop immediately from Gulf Indians," Prof Sir James Mirrlees said with a touch of optimism.

A Scotsman, Prof Mirrlees shared the 1996 Economics Nobel with William Vickrey "for their fundamental contributions to the economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information".

Prof Mirrlees was sharing his thoughts on the global economic crisis with the media in the city on Wednesday. The meet was staged by British Council and the Institute of Development Studies against the backdrop of partnership between Scotland and Kolkata.

"While China is suffering from a fall in growth rates, the Indian growth curve is still to see a marked dip. While I'm still to study and assess the Indian situation fully, one can say that India can't be entirely insulated from the meltdown. I think substantial stimulas packages from the government can fend off recession to quite an extent," Prof Mirrlees said. He agreed that remittances from the Indian diaspora spread across the US, UK and Europe could slide to a point if unemployment in the West, which were hovering at 5% levels, rise to 7-8%. But, this could be balanced in a manner by the Gulf scene where Indians are relatively better off. "Of course, there will always be some very rich Indians who will keep their remittances flow going," he said.

Even as he spoke of stimulus packages, Prof Mirrlees did stress that government expenditure can't solve the problem. "People are finding difficulty to fund investments. Obviously, India has to rely on increased demand," he said.

Dwelling on the American crisis, Prof Mirrlees said he had spoken to several senior bankers and was amazed how senior bankers failed to understand "what they were doing". "How could they have faltered in assessing and re-estimating the value of their assets. They were inventing assets and making people pay for them," he remarked.

The Economics Laureate favoured a dose of financial regulation and said he he would do away most derivatives except some futures.

"The history of economics has traced a trend of fluctuation in growth rates and national incomes. When things begin to go bad, the perception of people makes it worse. Some feel the recession will be over by mid-2009. Naturally, everything is a little uncertain now. But, it may be misplaced view that globalisation has made the scene more severe. After all, the financial world has become international now. However, we can't compare the present meltdown to the Great Depression. Governments are far more proactive this time round. Although the steps taken till now may not still be adequate," Prof Mirrlees observed.


Copyright © 2008 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved. For reprint rights: Times Syndication Service

 

[aimarraul]

I dont care whether I convince Chinese, Pakistani or Indians...it doesnt matter...Facts do..and inshallah should post only facts.

Happy.

facts≠WB's prediction .i am sure india's growth rate will overtake china's someday,i will like to congrats again then

 

[DaRk WaVe]

VOD India Republic Day Supplement: India: The fastest-growing telecom market
India: The Fastest Growing Telecom Market

India has emerged as the fastest growing telecom market in the world, attracting not just global service providers like Britian-based Vodafone but also big handset manufacturers like Finland's Nokia that not too long ago was reluctant to make an entry because of low volumes. For a country that stood at the bottom of the pyramid in terms of telecom penetration a decade ago, 2008 was a watershed when India's subscriber base topped 350 million users to make its network the second largest in the world after China, displacing the US.

Going by the recent data compiled by industry watchdog Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the growth is being powered with equal fervor by rural areas, once regarded as low-end, low-volume markets with modest purchasing power. The significant achievement was made possible by the mobile telephony segment of communications, which was once thought to be a gizmo for the rich, with a tariff of Rs.16.80 per call when the telecom revolution began in the country in the early 1990s.

But with tariff falling to less than 40 Indian paise a call and incoming calls becoming free, mobile telephony began to appeal to the masses. In fact, 2008 also saw Indian telecom operators add a whopping 8-10 million new subscribers to the network each month, making a host of global companies to look at the country as their next big market for growth. And the statistics speak for themselves. According to TRAI, the total number of telephone connections in the country reached 363.95 million at the end of Oct. 2008 against 256.55 million in the corresponding month last year.

This, despite the fact that the number of plain vanilla landlines in the country actually fell from 39.41 million in October 2007 to 38.22 million the same month last year. Tele-density shot up from a mere 12.7 percent in March 2006 to 31.5 percent on Oct. 31. India continues to be one of the fastest growing IT and telecom market. In 2008, India was ranked as the 14th highest IT spender and it is expected to move up to the 11th position by 2012. The projection by several leading global consultancies is that India's telecom network will overtake China's in the next 10 years.

"The telecom sector in India has registered a remarkable growth during the last few years propelled largely by the unprecedented growth of mobile telephony," said Nripendra Misra, TRAI's chairman, in a report obtained by Arab News. "Three years back, a target of 250 million telephone subscribers by 2007 was considered too ambitious, but we could achieve this target a few months ahead of schedule," Misra added.

Telecommunication access to rural India is going to be the most important development since the Green Revolution. Research analysts feel that mobile voice is overwhelmingly the engine of growth followed by next generation network, broadband and data. The sector, which will go through a major revamp with the launch of third generation (3G) mobile services, has seen a number of ups and downs in the recent past. A key development in the history of the telecom industry was when Bharti, in collaboration with 15 telecom players, signed a deal to build the first direct, high-bandwidth optical-fibre undersea cable system.

The international investor community also continued to bet on the Indian market. Norway-based Telenor, the world's seventh largest telecom operator, bought a new-generation telecom company Unitech Wireless by paying $1.29 billion for a 60 percent stake. Similarly, another start-up, Swan Telecom, which did not have a single subscriber, sold a 45-percent stake to the UAE's Etisalat for $900 million, taking the company's book value to $2 billion. Another major foreign inflow was announced when Japanese telecom giant NTT DoCoMo picked up 26 percent stake in Tata Teleservices for $ 2.7 billion.

Not only this, December 2008 also saw the much-touted third generation (3G) services being launched by the state-run telecom operator Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL). Under the brand 'Jaadu' (magic), MTNL ushered in the next wave of Indian telephony on Dec 11. With 3G and broadband wireless access (BWA) auctions a few days away, the government held a pre-bid conference to clarify on bidding related issues to the telecom operators and to make them aware of the rules of the game.

At present, every month, eight million new cell phone subscribers sign up for services in India. There are about 300 million cell phone users in India at present. This is expected to double to 500 million in just over two years. By 2012, one in every second Indian will be sporting a mobile phone, as the cell phone market is expected to expand to 600 million subscribers. The sector got a boost recently with the government granting licenses to over half a dozen players to operate services in multiple circles.

printer friendly version | 657 reads

http://telecompk.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/topidi.png

there is no India in this ranking till 2007, after just two year it has become the fastest growing telecom industry

 

[Spitfighter]

Guys, before this thread goes down the drain, all this is just speculation, only time will tell.

We don't need to prove anything to anyone, what matters is that both countries are doing well and we will shape things in future, more importantly, 2 billion people will benefit in the process.

I say kudos to both India and China for all that they are doing to improve the lives of their citizens. We should both be proud, so please don't turn this into another dck measuring contest.

 

[aimarraul]

China today said its economy in first three months of 2009 grew by 6.1 per cent, its lowest rate in over a decade, thus raising apprehensions about the communist nation losing its status as the world’s fastest growing economy to India.

While the official figures for growth in India’s gross domestic product during the first three months of 2009 is not available as yet, the country’s economy is estimated to have grown by 7.1 per cent in the fiscal ended 31 March.

Given a steeper decline than India in China’s GDP growth rate, which stood at 13 per cent in 2007 and fell to nine per cent in 2008, some experts opined that it would be interesting to watch which of the two economies grow faster going ahead.

Asked if China’s GDP growth rate could fall below that of India’s, Standard & Poor’s chief economist for Asia Pacific, Mr Subir Gokarn said over telephone that it was “quite likely in one particular quarter”, but on a yearly basis it might not be the case at least this year.

China News: Will India Overtake China?s Growth Rate? | China Digital Times (CDT)

why didn't you post the growth in the second quarter

 

[sensenreason]

Environment fears halt China dams

China has built a number of dams recently, including the Three Gorges
China's environment ministry has suspended construction of two dams on a tributary of the Yangtze River.

The projects on the Jinsha River had been started without environmental assessments or approval from the ministry, officials said.

The dams are part of a series of eight power stations planned for the Jinsha.

The $30bn (£18bn) project has been criticised by conservationists, who say it will damage the region's environment and biodiversity.

The power stations are expected to generate as much electricity as the controversial Three Gorges Dam - about 20 gigawatts.

The series of hydro-electric stations is planned for a 560km (350 mile) stretch of the Jinsha River in south-west China's Yunnan province.

Public outcry

The dams suspended by the environment ministry at Longkaikou and Ludila were being built by two of China's largest power-generating companies - Huaneng Power and Huadian Power.

"To protect the management of the environment... and to punish the violation of the environment and illegal acts regarding the environment, the environmental ministry decided to suspend the construction projects in the middle reaches of the Jinsha River," a statement from the Ministry of Environmental Protection said.

The ministry also suspended approvals for the two companies' other projects, except those involving energy-saving and pollution prevention measures.

At the same time, the ministry said it was suspending construction projects in eastern Shandong province begun by a state-owned steel company because it had not submitted an environmental impact assessment.

Two other dams in the Jinsha River project have received approval from the environment ministry, but another dam planned for the Tiger Leaping Gorge area was suspended after a public outcry in 2005.

Tiger Leaping Gorge and the nearby town of Lijiang are popular with tourists and trekkers.

Further hydro-electric dams are also planned for elsewhere on the Yangtze River system, as Chinese authorities attempt to reduce their reliance on burning coal to produce power.