IMF’s April Outlook projects India to become fourth largest in 2025 

IMF projects India to surpass Japan as the fourth largest economy, aiming to reach $5 trillion by 2027.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s April Outlook held that India would surpass Japan to become the fourth largest economy. The global financial institution tasked to promote economic stability estimates India’s gross domestic product, at current prices, is expected to scale about $4,187.02 billion in 2025. This would be marginally higher than its nearest peer Japan estimated to reach $4,186.43 billion. United States (with a GDP of $30,507.22 billion), China ($19,231.71) and Germany ($4,744.8 billion) continue being the three largest economies globally in the same order.

The outlook further projected that India would be able to achieve their ambition of becoming a $5 trillion economy by 2027. This would be after two successive years of GDP growth at about 9.9% and 10.2% respectively. IMF further projects that India’s GDP would exceed $6.8 trillion by 2030.

A scrutiny of IMF data also indicated that India’s GDP growth rate in 2026 and 2027 would be, notwithstanding the individual size of the larger economies, higher than that of the U.S., China, Japan and United Kingdom, among others.

IMF further underlined that the Indian economy is projected to grow 6.2% in 2025 and 6.3% in 2026. The global financial institution promoting financial stability underlined that the growth outlook is relatively more stable at 6.2% in 2025 supported by “private consumption, particularly in rural areas”. However, it held that the rate was 0.3 percentage points lower than their projections published in January indicative of “higher levels of trade tensions and global uncertainty”.

It is also noteworthy that India’s projected rate of economic growth is also higher than that of China (4%), U.S. (1.8%), Japan (0.6%) and UK (1.1%).