| | FEBRUARY 20208Globalization, technological advancements and in-novations are touching every aspect of our daily lives with the promise of a better world. Paradox-ically, the morose sentiment over the global and Indian economy in the past few years has been a growing threat. The question is, whether the slowdown is structural, cycli-cal temporary or a phase of mutation that can be stabilized by synchronizing the different actors like Government, private sector and the central bank.Indian economic slowdown is now a reality accept-ed by leading economists. IMF has slashed GDP growth rate forecast from seven percent to 6.1 percent. Dithering domestic consumption, the underperformance of major sectors like automobiles, non-performing manufacturing sector, and increasing NPAs have contributed to the decel-erating economy. Consequently, measures like demoneti-zation, and the introduction of GST & RERA have slowed the economy. In the current economic scenario, a keyword that comes to mind is consolidation. On one hand, there is market-driven consolidation where larger players are engulfing smaller players, thereby creating more space for themselves in the market. For instance, the bankruptcy of Jet Airways has led to bigger market share for Indigo and SpiceJet. On the other hand, the Government is driving consoli-dation among PSBs to create four big banks. Consolidation helps strengthen balance sheets and brings focus on prof-itability, but it has an initial negative impact on growth. Consider the bank mergers; while public sector banks are in the process of integration and focusing on the NPL issues, their customers are migrating to the private sec-tor banks due to their better customer service and client centricity. The NPL issues created by bankrupt promoters Headquartered in New York, IBM is one of the world's leading tech services conglomerate well-known for its cutting-edge innovation practices and offerings.By Alyyalur R Akhileshwara, Partner & Industry Leader - Banking & Financial Markets, IBM IndiaEXPERTS TALKINDIAN ECONOMY: AN ENIGMATIC REALITYAlyyalur R Akhileshwara, Partner & Industry Leader - Banking & Financial MarketsTHOUGHT LEADERSHIP
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