High flying without a parachute

The April 2007 issue of Business Week laments about the cautious Chinese consumer: In China private consumption is less than 40% of the GDP which BW compares to India at about 60% of the GDP. Leaving the worrying about China to BW, I wish to wonder instead what this says about Indian personal spending trends. Especially in light of private consumption in developed nations: India beats out both Japan and Germany and gets scarily close to the consumption king, the USA at about 70%.

If I am reading this right, and its probable I am not (a query to the masters on PEN-L should ascertain that; expect an update shortly), Indians are on a merry spending binge, cheered on by the “flattening” world which they consider themselves an inhabitant of, impervious to the existence of a security net for the residents of the welfare states whose league they are playing in. Let us hope they do not fall off the edge!

This entry was posted on Monday, September 24th, 2007 at 10:10 pm and is filed under Economics, India. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.