There is not much good news for the country: The Indian economy is likely to grow at a rate of seven per cent in the current fiscal, against the 8.7 per cent growth that was registered in 2021-22 despite the pandemic and the crisis that it had caused. This forecast came from the National Statistical Office on Friday. According to the NSO's first advance estimates of National Income for the 2022-23 fiscal, the Real GDP (Gross Domestic Product) or GDP at Constant (2011-12) Prices in the year 2022-23 is estimated at Rs 157.60 lakh crore, as against the Provisional Estimate of GDP for the year 2021-22 of Rs 147.36 lakh crore, released on May 31, 2022. Based on this calculation, NSO has forecast that the growth in real GDP of the country during 2022-23 fiscal is estimated at seven per cent as compared to 8.7 per cent in 2021-22. But then, this forecast of NSO comes close on the heels of the Reserve Bank of India's forecast made in December 2022, in which it had scaled down the GDP growth forecast to 6.8 per cent for the current fiscal from the earlier estimate of 7 per cent. The RBI, it may be recalled, had attributed this mainly to prevailing geo-political tensions and global tightening. While this forecast of NSO has evoked mixed reactions, what a leading economic analyst has been quoted as having said is that India's economy has grown in recent times with the support of the services sector. On the contrary, the manufacturing sector, which has remained under constant pressure due to high input costs, has recorded weak growth in the recent past. On the expenditure side, consumption growth and investment growth have shown resilience aided by post-pandemic normalization in economic activities and strong pent-up demand. But the good news is that looking ahead, despite numerous challenges looming on the external front, India's export growth is likely to moderate in the next few months. The optimism has received a further boost with both RBI and the International Monetary Fund emphatically forecasting a 6.8 per cent growth in FY23, while the World Bank has gone one step further by putting it at 6.9 per cent.