India to grow at 6.5 % in 2013: S&P

Ratings agency Standard & Poor's has said it expects the Indian economy to grow at 6.5 per cent during 2013, and sees the possibility of global economic recovery continuing during the year.

For China, S&P expects the growth rate to move back to the 8 per cent level in 2013, after it slipped to 7.4 per cent in the third quarter of 2012.

In a report on global credit outlook for 2013, S&P said that "the ball is in the policymakers' court" to sustain the global economic recovery.

Noting that there is "not much room for error in the global economy" in 2013, the S&P economists said it has been through a very challenging period in recent years. This included "the near total collapse of the financial system in 2008 and the very deep global recession that followed at the end of 2008 and the first half of 2009''.

"The global economy started recovering in mid-2009, and that recovery at a global level has pretty much continued. We expect it to continue into 2013, but it is a fairly precarious situation. "Precarious because the recovery process – the healing, de-leveraging, balance sheet recovery, and economic recovery – is still working its way through the system," S&P's chief global economist Paul Sheard said.

Sheard said that S&P expects a "soft landing" in China, while its forecast for India is a 6.5 per cent growth in 2013.