China on Friday launched a space probe to collect samples from the far side of the moon in a mission that has been billed as “unprecedented” as the global space race heats up.

An unmanned rocket carrying the Chang’e-6 lunar probe took off from Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province just before 5:30 p.m. local time, kick-starting the 53-day planned mission.

The expedition aims to return around 5 pounds of lunar samples to Earth for analysis. If successful, scientists hope the findings could unlock fresh information about the moon’s origins.

“Collecting and returning samples from the far side of the moon is an unprecedented feat,” Wu Weiren, chief designer of China’s lunar exploration program, said, according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua.

“Scientists currently know very little about the moon’s far side. If the Chang’e-6 mission can achieve its goal, it will provide scientists with the first direct evidence to understand the environment and material composition of the far side of the moon, which is of great significance,” he added.

The launch marks a significant step forward in China’s space exploration ambitions as it seeks to compete with other global powers including the U.S.

Beijing has also stated that it wants to land Chinese astronauts on the moon by 2030, as well as sending probes to Mars and Jupiter.

Space is becoming a new geopolitical frontier as rival nations seek to expand their influence and access highly sought-after supplies of metals and critical minerals.

The head of the U.S. Space Command, Gen. Stephen Whiting, said last week that Beijing’s space development was moving at “breathtaking speed” and that the country was showing “clear intent” to project its power in orbit.

Japanese Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki on Friday backed currency interventions by his country’s policymakers if the yen moved in sharp directions that started to affect households and companies.

Speaking to reporters at the Asian Development Bank’s annual meeting in Tbilisi, Georgia, he said it was desirable for exchange rates to move stably.

“When there is an excessive movement, it may be necessary to smooth it out,” he told CNBC’s Dan Murphy, according to a translation.

The finance minister declined to comment when asked whether current levels for the yen were appropriate. He also would not comment on whether his ministry had intervened in the currency market recently, amid intense speculation.

On Wednesday, the currency strengthened by more than 2% to trade near 153 against the dollar, which is likely to have been caused by an intervention, according to some market analysts. Japanese authorities are yet to issue an official statement confirming their role in propping up the currency.

“The government has been refusing to disclose whether they’ve been intervening or not, but I don’t think many people have any doubts,” Nicholas Smith, Japan strategist at CLSA, told CNBC earlier this week.

A weak yen against the greenback can hurt the economy by raising import costs and Suzuki’s words on Friday are more confirmation that policymakers are keeping a close eye on the exchange rate.

The yen was trading at 152.85 against the dollar on Friday evening Asia time. In the past few decades, while other global central banks have tightened their policies, Japan has maintained its ultra-loose strategy.

— CNBC’s Shreyashi Sanyal contributed to this story.

This report is from this week’s CNBC’s “Inside India” newsletter which brings you timely, insightful news and market commentary on the emerging powerhouse and the big businesses behind its meteoric rise. Like what you see? You can subscribe here.

It was a tale of two European companies. But one that could foreshadow India’s growth story. 

When fintech firm Klarna said it was using artificial intelligence to provide customer service earlier this year, shares of the French outsourcing giant Teleperformance tumbled by nearly 20%. 

The Swedish buy-now-pay-later firm had revealed that its AI chatbot was now doing the work of 700 full-time customer service jobs, netting the firm $40 million in savings. That was enough to frighten investors into dumping shares of Teleperformance over concerns that AI would disrupt its own profitable call center business in the future. 

The Paris-listed company, worth nearly 6 billion euros ($6.4 billion), employs 500,000 people globally who do telemarketing, customer relationship management, and content moderation, among other roles — all at risk of being disrupted by AI. The firm’s stock has tanked by 55% since ChatGPT launched, while the French stock market has risen by 24%. 

Can Teleperformance’s stock plunge be the canary in the coal mine for what is likely to happen to India because of AI? The chief executive of India’s Tata Consultancy Services thinks so. 

K Krithivasan told the Financial Times recently that AI is likely to resolve customer complaints even before people pick up the phone to call a company’s helpline — eliminating most call center jobs in the process.

The head of TCS, which predominantly employs software developers in its global workforce of some 600,000 people, expects this is likely to happen in “a year or so down the line.” 

While Krithivasan said that job losses have yet to materialize due to AI, others are already counting the impact it’s likely to have on the labor market.  

Researchers from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the University of Oxford found that the demand for AI skills hurts labor demand for non-AI roles in India. This means that for every job created that requires a specialism in AI, there are fewer jobs in other sectors. 

“We find that AI adoption initially coincides with a small increase in general hiring but then reduces demand for non-AI workers over the next few years, such that the overall effect is substantially negative,” the researchers said. 

However, automation in the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector could quickly turn political due to its outsized position in India’s economy. 

While it employs only 0.4% of all jobs, the sector is responsible for 6.5% of India’s GDP and 25% of its exports, according to Capital Economics. It also employs many of India’s youth — a demographic currently responsible for more than 80% of all unemployed people in India. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, currently contesting for a third term in the ongoing general elections, has already been pressured by opposition parties for not doing enough to create jobs. AI, it appears, is set to make his job harder if he’s re-elected. 

It’s not all doom and gloom, however. 

Even under the absolute worst-case scenario — and highly unlikely — where the BPO sector is wholly decimated, Shilan Shah, deputy chief emerging markets economist at Capital Economics, estimates the damage will amount to a mere 0.8 percentage points off annual GDP growth. 

Yes, every job lost is a period of turmoil and misery for the individual and often their dependents. But it’s likely to be a blip for India’s growth trajectory, given the macro forces at play.  

Investment bank Nomura, for instance, has forecast that India’s economy will grow 7% on average over the next five years on the back of growth in manufacturing — a sector that is yet to see real AI disruption.

India also appears to be focused on creating jobs in high-tech sectors and has had some successes recently. 

Qualcomm, the American chip giant, is already designing semiconductors in Chennai by tapping into the country’s pool of talented engineers. India has also been wooing foreign chip makers like Taiwan’s Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to set up operations in the country. 

Besides creating jobs that are less likely to be immediately disrupted by AI, India could also be a net beneficiary of artificial intelligence. 

Due to its geographical characteristics, India is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world when it comes to climate change.  

India’s meteorological department revealed earlier this year that it is set to use AI to improve weather forecasts and predict severe events. It is expected to positively impact the agricultural sector, which employs about 45% of India’s workforce.

The rapid improvement in India’s financial infrastructure — the UPI payments network — has given birth to several new tech companies currently using AI to lower the cost of finance.

India is also unlikely to be alone in confronting the challenges AI poses. Goldman Sachs last year estimated that one in four jobs in the U.S. and Europe are also at risk of disruption.

While it will be a challenge for India, it’s unlikely to be a problem for only India. 

Our News Editor Vinay Dwivedi has been on the ground in India speaking to farmers who have been spearheading protests against the government in recent months. About 250 million people work in agriculture in India.

Their main demand is a guaranteed minimum support price across agriculture commodities, to combat rising production costs. But the government has shown no signs of capitulation, even as it risks losing support from this huge farmer population at the ballot box.

Meanwhile, economists have said the farmers’ demands are not economically viable.

“These demands are not just detrimental to the agricultural sector, but they will throw a major spanner in the economy. The entire economy will go into a tizzy,” economist and a former chairman of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices, Ashok Gulati, said.

Nomura projects India’s economy could grow by an average of 7% in the next five years. The new prediction by the Japanese bank is reliant on policy continuity after the election result — whoever wins. The projection is much higher than Nomura’s growth outlook for China (3.9%), Singapore (2.5%) and South Korea (1.8%) in the same period. 

America’s fastest-growing sport is looking to India for its next leg of growth. The United Pickleball Association and Global Sports announced a deal last week to bring the PPA Tour and Major League Pickleball to India. Pickleball, for those that don’t know, is a racket sport that combines elements of tennis, table-tennis and badminton.

White House comments on India’s alleged role in assassination plots. A Washington Post report alleged that the Indian intelligence services were involved in assassination plots in Canada and the United States. India’s foreign ministry said the report made “unwarranted and unsubstantiated imputations on a serious matter,” while White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters. “We’re going to continue to raise our concerns.”

The Indian stock market indexes, Sensex and Nifty 50, are heading for a positive week again — up by 1% and 1.2%, respectively. The benchmarks are up by 3.28% and 4.22% so far this year.

The 10-year Indian government bond yield has been trading range bound — with a rate between 7.15 and 7.20 in the last last week.

The Indian rupee has slackened against the U.S. dollar, even as global oil prices edged lower as markets repriced for fewer U.S. rate cuts this year. However, markets also interpreted U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell as being less hawkish than expected as he downplayed the possibility of an interest rate hike during his press conference Wednesday.

On CNBC TV this week, we had Raghuram Rajan, the former Reserve Bank of India governor and professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He said India’s 8.5% growth rate has some “fluff” in it, but added that “even 6-6.5%” is a pretty good number for the country.

Meanwhile, Ashish Jain, the chief financial officer of the Indian food processing company KRBL, discussed the country’s agricultural slump in the wake of poor weather conditions.

CNBC’s Ayushi Jindal also sent a report from inside Qualcomm’s newly built design center in Chennai, where they are already designing chips.

Aside from the elections, we’ll have Indegene, which provides digital services to the life science industry, hitting the Indian primary market. The subscription will be from May 6-8, and shares will likely be listed on the BSE and NSE on May 13.

There is some ‘fluff’ in India’s economic growth rate, according to former Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan.

This isn’t a reflection of “pessimism” as “even 6-6.5% growth is a pretty good number,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Thursday.

India’s economy grew a robust 8.4% in the October to December quarter, blowing past expectations, on strong private consumption and manufacturing activity. Reuters had estimated GDP growth of 6.6%.

“The 8.5% has a little bit of fluff in it,” said Rajan, currently a professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

The Indian government raised its GDP growth outlook for fiscal year 2023-24 to 7.6% from 7.3% forecast earlier.

Rajan said one of problems with GDP data is that it mostly reflects India’s large firms while smaller companies have only seen “tepid growth.”

“When we eventually readjust the GDP numbers, with the fact that small firms haven’t grown that much, my guess is — we’ll come closer to the 6-6.5%,” he said.

Last month,  IMF executive director Krishnamurthy Subramanian told CNBC that India was set to grow at an annual rate of 8%, as the government focuses on higher capital expenditure, which has increased significantly over the last few years.

India’s finance ministry has forecast that the country is on track to becoming to be the world’s third-largest economy by 2027, with a GDP of $5 trillion.

“It’s good to be realistic about your GDP numbers because that forms the basis of policy. If you think you’re growing fantastically, why change policy at all?” Rajan said.

The International Monetary Fund has called India “the world’s fastest-growing major economy,” where “public investment remains an important driver.”

But to maintain strong rates of growth India’s private sector investment “has to pick up strongly,” to create jobs so that more people can join the labor force, Rajan said.

“With all the euphoria about Indian growth — why aren’t private Indian firms investing at a larger rate than they have been?” he added. “Everybody says they’re going to invest but the fact on the ground is they haven’t invested enough so far.”

Other experts, however, have voiced different opinions. Bhargav Dasgupta, vice-president (Market Solutions) at the Asian Development Bank (ADB) reportedly said last month that growth in private investments in India was “very visible,” and the bank was also looking to scale up its investments in the country.

— CNBC’s Shreyashi Sanyal contributed to this report

A shortage of olive oil, sometimes referred to as “liquid gold,” has driven prices to record highs, fueled a crime surge and pushed the industry into crisis mode.

The skyrocketing price of the liquid fat, a superfood staple of the Mediterranean diet, has stunned consumers and industry veterans alike in recent months.

Kyle Holland, an analyst at market research group Mintec, said climate-fueled extreme weather had “significantly impacted” olive oil production in southern Europe in recent years, particularly in Mediterranean countries such as Spain, Italy and Greece.

Spain, which supplies more than 40% of the world’s production according to the Centre for the Promotion of Imports, might typically be expected to produce somewhere between 1.3 million to 1.5 million metric tons of olive oil each harvest, Holland said.

However, official figures showed Spain only cultivated around 666,000 metric tons for the 2022/2023 campaign. Market players surveyed by Mintec expect a production range of 830,000 to 850,000 metric tons for Spain’s 2023/2024 season, an increase of roughly 40,000 metric tons from previous estimates.

Extra virgin olive oil prices in Spain’s Andalusia stood at 7.8 euros ($8.4) per kilogram as of April 19, according to Mintec’s benchmark index, down from just over 8 euros at the end of March. The decline extends a downward trend, after olive oil prices reached an unprecedented peak of 9.2 euros in January.

A dizzying rally for olive oil has cooled in recent weeks, in part due to beneficial rains in March and April and to an uptick in production estimates for Spain’s olive harvest. But analysts said that dwindling olive oil reserves would likely keep markets on edge for sudden price spikes over the coming months.

“I think the biggest concern is effectively the overall supply. People are quite bearish on the market right now, but as the season wears on, and as we get further and further away from the harvest we’ve just had, most market players seem to think that it is going to drain,” Holland told CNBC by telephone.

“The question on people’s lips is yes, prices seem to be going down right now, but eventually people are going to need to start buying. And when you’re buying against diminished volumes, they are saying that if volumes drain and everyone needs to buy, then prices have to go up.”

“This is not normal,” Vito Martielli, senior analyst of grains and oilseeds at Netherlands-based Rabobank, told CNBC by telephone.

Martielli said the recent price volatility was like nothing he’d ever seen in his more than 20 years of studying the olive oil sector.

“To have a clear view, I think we need to wait a couple of months until the end of June, but rain in the month of the March was a positive signal for improving production,” he added.

Helena Bennett, head of climate policy at independent think tank Green Alliance UK, unequivocally attributed the record spike in olive oil prices to climate change.

“The world’s biggest exporter of olive oil, Spain, has halved its production due to drought and extreme heat, increasing its price (at origin!) 112% since 2022,” Bennett said on social media platform X on April 10.

“It’s happening to other food crops too. Olive oil today, everything else soon.”

In a first of its kind regional analysis of climate-related risks, the European Environment Agency said in March that European countries should prepare for “catastrophic” consequences, as the deepening climate crisis hits every part of their economies this century.

The EEA’s report said climate impacts on food production could hit the region hard, particularly in southern Europe, as extreme heat becomes more frequent and precipitation patterns change.

Asked how vulnerable olive trees were to climate change, Mintec’s Holland replied: “The word I would use is ‘exceedingly.'”

Holland said, “I think one thing I would say is that players we speak to are extremely concerned, because the climate generally is getting warmer. And a lot of these issues are exacerbated, of course, with more heat, less rain, drier soils, less moisture and olive oil flies are also one of these issues that people speculate is only going to get worse.”

He added, “Some players we speak to that have been doing this for many years wonder how they are going to carry on because if you are losing 40%, 50%, 60% of your crop and you still have all the input costs and the fertilizer costs, the tending, weeding, the watering if you can … then the issue is quite critical.”

Rising olive oil prices have also coincided with a spate of thefts.

Supermarkets in Spain said in early March that olive oil had become the most stolen item across large swaths of the country, according to The Financial Times. The main culprits were said to be criminal gangs targeting the essential food item for resale on the black market.

In August last year, approximately 50,000 liters of extra virgin olive oil was stolen from one of Spain’s oil mills in the Cordoba region, according to local media reports.

The stolen olive oil was estimated to have been worth more than 420,000 euros at the time.

— CNBC’s Lee Ying Shan contributed to this report.

Qantas on Wednesday apologized after some customers using the Australian airline’s app were shown the name, flight details and loyalty status of other passengers.

The national carrier said there was no indication this was a cyber security incident, and that its current investigation suggests that the data breach was caused by a technology issue related to recent system changes.

Qantas shares dipped 1.2% during Wednesday trade.

During two periods on Wednesday morning, some users of the Qantas app were shown the details of other members of the airline’s frequent flyer program, including their name, upcoming flight details, loyalty points balance and status. The breach did not give visibility over the financial information of other passengers.

Customers were not able to transfer or use other people’s airline points, and there were no reports of customers boarding flights using incorrect details, Qantas said.

During the incident, Qantas advised customers to log out and then back in to their frequent flyer app account.

“We sincerely apologise to all customers impacted and continue to monitor the Qantas app closely,” the airline said in a statement.

The Qantas incident comes after other airlines experienced data breaches involving malicious actors in recent years. Spain’s Air Europa last year told customers that a cyberattack on its online payment system had exposed some credit card details, according to Reuters, while British Airways was fined £20 million, or $24.9 million, in 2020 for a major data breach that exposed the personal and credit card data of hundreds of thousands of passengers.

HSBC on Tuesday announced the surprise departure of Group Chief Executive Officer Noel Quinn after nearly five years at the helm.

In a statement released by the bank, Quinn said:

First appointed as interim CEO in August 2019, Quinn took permanent leadership of HSBC in March 2020. He led the bank through challenges including the Covid-19 pandemic and deteriorating relations between China and the West.

The bank’s London-listed shares have risen over 30% since he became CEO.

On Tuesday, shares of HSBC — which also announced first-quarter earnings that beat expectations — were 3.6% higher at 11:04 a.m. London time.

The bank’s Chairman Mark Tucker paid tribute to Quinn’s leadership. “He has driven both our transformation strategy and created a simpler, more focused business that delivers higher returns. The bank is in a strong position as it enters the next phase of development and growth,” Tucker said in a statement.

HSBC said the hunt for its next CEO had begun, and that Quinn would remain in his post during this process.

Hong Kong on Tuesday launched six spot bitcoin and ether exchange traded funds — becoming the first in Asia to offer retail investors the ability to trade the cryptocurrencies at spot prices.

The cryptocurrency ETFs were issued by three Chinese firms — China Asset Management, Bosera Asset Management, and Harvest Global Investments — on the Hong Kong exchange.

Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) approved the three ETF providers two weeks ago.

Spot bitcoin ETFs by ChinaAMC, Bosera HashKey and Harvest were above 3% higher in early trading, but subsequently gave up some gains to trade by about 1.5% higher. The three ether ETFs were trading above 1% in the morning, but fell into negative territory by the late afternoon.

Bitcoin was trading at $63,218 at 3:50 a.m. ET, while ether was trading at $3,159, according to Coin Metrics data.

Hong Kong is one of the first places in the world to approve an ether ETF. In January, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved changes to allow the creation of bitcoin ETFs in the U.S., but has yet to approve an ether ETF.

Crypto ETFs allow investors to gain exposure to the price movement of the underlying assets without having to own the asset directly.

The move is seen as positive for Hong Kong markets.

“There’s a bigger game at play here: The launch of these new ETFs puts Hong Kong one step ahead of Singapore and Dubai who are also trying to establish themselves as regulated hubs for digital assets,” Antoni Trenchev, co-founder of crypto exchange Nexo told CNBC on Tuesday.

“First mover advantage is everything in this game.”

Trenchev said Japan, Singapore, and South Korea could be next to approve similar products in the next two years.

Executives of the Chinese asset managers ushered in the debut of their ETFs at the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Tuesday morning, highlighting that the move will allow institutional and retail investors to enter a regulated market to trade crypto assets and create a diverse product base for the broader exchange.

“The market potential is double the size of that of our U.S. counterparts,” Tongli Han, chief executive officer of Harvest Global Investments told CNBC.

The question remains on how fast demand for such products will grow in the region.

The spot crypto ETFs had received regulatory approval under the provision of virtual asset management services, but crypto futures ETFs have been trading on the HKEX since late 2022.

“Investor interest in virtual asset ETFs has grown since VA Futures ETFs were first launched in late 2022,” the exchange said in a statement on Tuesday.

HKEX said the combined average daily turnover for the three VA Futures ETFs listed on the exchange reached 51.3 million Hong Kong dollars ($6.6 million) during the first quarter of 2024, up from HK$8.9 million a year earlier.

Additionally, the futures ETFs saw net inflows of HK$529 million in the first quarter.

Han from Harvest Global said he expects slow growth in crypto assets under management initially in Hong Kong as many investors prefer watching from the sidelines at first. But over time, he said he expects demand will pick up.

Nexo’s Trenchev noted that the relatively small size of Hong Kong’s ETF market could mean it would be years before it matched “the $12.4 billion of net inflows their U.S. peers.”

CNBC asked HashKey what kind of regulation they would like to see on the back of scandals involving FTX and Binance.

“We set the example and then we showed how crypto can be regulated reasonably, and in a very user-friendly or industry-friendly manner. Of course, we would like the pace going a little bit faster,” said Heddy Tsang, executive director of HashKey Exchange told CNBC.

— CNBC’s Emily Chan and Yolande Chee contributed to this report.

The International Monetary Fund raised its Asia growth forecast for 2024 on Tuesday, as it remained optimistic about India’s growth and focused on the need for more stimulus from China.

The IMF now expects Asia’s economy to grow 4.5% this year, up 0.3 percentage points from six months earlier. Its forecast for 2025 remained unchanged at 4.3%.

“The outlook for Asia and the Pacific in 2024 has brightened: we now expect that the region’s economy will slow less than we previously projected as inflation pressures continue to dissipate,” Krishna Srinivasan, director of Asia and Pacific at the IMF wrote.

The upward revision reflects upgrades for China, the IMF said, where it expects policy stimulus to provide support.

It also called India “the world’s fastest-growing major economy,” where “public investment remains an important driver.” India is currently the world’s fifth-largest economy with GDP of $3.7 trillion and is aiming to become the world’s third-largest by 2027.

IMF’s Srinivasan also wrote that strong private consumption will continue to drive growth in Asia’s other emerging markets.

The IMF credited monetary tightening, lower commodity prices and subsiding supply-chain disruptions with lowering inflation in Asia despite high demand growth.

The IMF said the biggest risk for Asia’s economy is an extended correction in China’s property sector. That would weaken demand and increase the chances of prolonged deflation, raising the chances of hitting other economies through “direct trade spillovers.”

“This means China’s policy response matters — for both itself and the entire region,” Srinivasan wrote in the blog.

China needs a policy package that “accelerates the exit of nonviable property developers, promotes the completion of housing projects, and manages debt risks of local governments,” the IMF said. It noted China’s fiscal stimulus in October and March helped ease the impact of declining manufacturing activity and sluggish services.

Earlier this year, the IMF said it expects Asia’s largest economy to grow 4.6% in 2024. The projection came before data that showed China’s economy grew by 5.2% last year, matching the official target of around 5%.

Optimism in India’s growth shows little signs of slowing, but policy continuity will be crucial if it wants to see strong growth in the next five years, Rob Subbaraman, Nomura’s chief economist and head of global markets research Asia ex-Japan, said. 

“The Modi administration in Modi 2.0 has done a very good job,” Subbaraman told CNBC last week, referring to the fact that Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have won two terms in office since 2014.

India’s elections are underway and Modi is widely expected to win a strong mandate for a third term in office.

Nomura has projected that India’s economy could grow by an average of 7% in the next five years — if the current policies driving growth stay in place, Subbaraman said on Friday.

That projection is much higher than Nomura’s growth outlook for China (3.9%), Singapore (2.5%) and South Korea (1.8%) in the same period. 

“With China’s economy slowing, India is likely to be the fastest growing Asian economy this decade,” Nomura said in a recent note. 

“Irrespective of the election outcome, policy continuity and a focus on macroeconomic stability are important growth underpinnings,” the bank’s analysts added. 

Under Modi’s rule, India’s economy is expected to grow 6.7% this year, compared to China’s predicted growth of 4%, Nomura’s projections showed. Large economies outside Asia like the U.S. could also see slower growth at 2.8% this year.

“The big thing that’s changing in India is investment,” Subbaraman said. “Investment as a share of GDP is starting to rise. All the stars are aligned for private capex to start igniting, including FDI [foreign direct investments].”

While Nomura is bullish on India, the firm’s chief economist for India and Asia (ex-Japan), Sonal Varma, warned in a note that headwinds remain and it’s crucial for India to ensure a stronger economy to boost employment.

“Stronger foundations do not necessarily mean that the economy is invincible. The current growth recovery, while strong, is still uneven, and there are risks from global spillovers.”

India has ambitious plans to be a global manufacturing powerhouse, and investments into the sector are expected to boost its economy. 

India’s Union Minister for Railways, Communications, Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw told CNBC in February that India could clock up to 8% annual GDP growth for several years as it focuses on boosting its manufacturing capabilities. 

In the interim budget announced earlier this year, the government earmarked 11.11 trillion rupees ($133.9 billion) in capital expenditure for fiscal year 2025, an 11.1% jump from the prior year.

However, Nomura noted that the share of India’s overall exports in global merchandise exports is still only around 2%, and it will continue playing catch up with other countries in Asia. 

“The manufacturing takeoff is in its early stages, in our view, and the full impact should become visible over the next 3-5 years.” 

India’s financial services sector, which contributes to approximately 7% of GDP, is also playing a more prominent role in hoisting the country’s economic growth, Nomura said.

“Just before the pandemic, India had a non performing asset problem and there was a big cleanup of the banks,” Subbaraman said. “The bank supervision and requirements among banks is better than it has been any time before.”