The prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, highlighted the 7.8% strong economic growth of the country in the first quarter of the financial year 2025-2026. The GDP of India has outperformed expectations with this growth rate despite the uncertainty and challenges of the global markets.
Speaking at Semicon India 2025, PM Modi said the latest growth figures were proof of India’s resilience in a turbulent global environment. “Just a few days ago, the GDP numbers for the first quarter came out. Once again, India has performed better than every expectation, every assessment,” he said, stressing how India continues to grow despite “economic selfishness” abroad.
Though he did not directly mention, his remarks were widely seen as a subtle dig at the Trump administration’s recent trade actions. Former US President Donald Trump imposed high tariffs of 50% on Indian imports and an additional 25% on India’s Russian oil purchases, arguing it was part of his agenda to “Make America Great Again.”
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Trump also took fresh aim at New Delhi’s trade engagement with Moscow, calling India’s partnership with Russia part of a “dead economy.” In a fiery Truth Social post, he declared, “I do not care what India does with Russia. They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care. We have done very little business with India; their tariffs are too high, among the highest in the world.”
Yet, India’s economic data tells a different story. The 7.8% expansion, the fastest pace in five quarters, outshone both the 7.4% growth in the previous quarter and the 6.7% average projection in a recent Mint poll of economists.
Gross Value Added (GVA) is viewed as a sharper reflection of underlying activity and it also grew 7.6%, surging from 6.8% in the previous three months, signaling momentum across sectors. India has surpassed expectations by using global challenges as a chance to show its economic strength.