The National Statistical Office reported on 31 August 2026 that real GDP grew 7.8 per cent in the June quarter, against 6.9 per cent in the same quarter a year earlier and well above the RBI’s 7 per cent projection. Real GDP stood at ₹81.36 lakh crore. The finance minister carried the figure into her investor meetings in New York the following week.
The sectoral picture was led by services, which grew 10 per cent, with financial, real estate, professional and IT services up 12.1 per cent. Manufacturing value added rose 9.2 per cent and construction and utilities lifted the secondary sector to 8.6 per cent. The primary sector grew 2.9 per cent, and mining and quarrying contracted 2.4 per cent. On the demand side, gross fixed capital formation — investment — rose 11.9 per cent and exports 12 per cent, while imports fell slightly.
The argument that followed was about the denominator rather than the growth. The former finance secretary Subhash Chandra Garg questioned the headline, noting that the current-price GDP for the same quarter a year earlier had been revised down from about ₹86 lakh crore to about ₹80 lakh crore under the new 2022-23 base year, and arguing that on an unrevised basis nominal growth would be far lower.
SBI Research rejected that reading, calling the comparison misleading and stating that the correct like-for-like comparison gives nominal growth of about 9.7 per cent, with real growth of 7.4 per cent on that basis. It noted that revisions are routine — 25 upward and 12 downward during 2022-23 to 2024-25 — and that the June quarter figure will not be finalised until February 2029.
The dispute is technical in form and political in effect, because a base-year revision makes year-on-year comparisons across the break unreliable in a way that is easy to argue about and hard to settle. Both the 7.8 per cent and the lower figure can be defended from the same release, depending on which vintage of the denominator is used. The next release, for the September quarter, is due on 30 November.
