# GDP growth

• The Indian economy expanded at its fastest in a year, helped by a favourable base effect and robust growth in the farm, services, construction and private consumption, as economic activity gathered pace after the lifting of Covid-19 curbs.
• Contact intensive sectors has shown a great sign of revival.
• Data released by the National statistical office (NSO) showed the country’s GDP rose by an annual 13.5% in the April-june quarter of the current fiscal year.
• This is higher than the 4.1% in the previous quarter but below 20.1% recorded in the first quarter of 2021-22.
• The 13.5% growth was lower than the Reserve Bank of India’s estimate of 16.2% for the first quarter of 2022-23.
• The farm sector growth was robust at 4.5% in the June quarter while services sector rose 17.6%.
• Private consumption grew by 25.9%.

# Uttar pradesh

• Ruling that only the centre has the power to include a caste in the list of schedule castes, the allahabad high court on Wednesday cancelled, three government orders, issued between 2016 and 2019, through which 18 sub castes from other backward classes were notified as Schedule castes in UP.
• The first two notifications were issued by the SP government on December 21-22, 2016 while the BJP government issued the third one on June 24 2019.

# Unemployment rate

• The unemployment rate in urban areas in the 15 years and above age group slowed to 7.6% in the April-June quarter of 2022 as economic activity gathered pace after lifting of Covid-19 curbs.
• The periodic labour force survey for the April-June quarter also showed that the labor force participation rate (LFPR) improved only marginally during the period to 47.5% from 47.3% in the January-March quarter.

# GST

• The finance ministry expects GST collections to grow 27% in August to ₹1.42 lakh crores.
• The officials however, identified commodity and oil prices and a possible impact of the slowdown in advanced economies as the causes of a slowdown in GST collections.