The slowdown in India will have an effect on the global growth story and it has pushed down the global forecast by "0.1 percent", Gita Gopinath, the Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund or IMF told NDTV in an exclusive interview on Monday.

The International Monetary Fund has slashed India's growth forecast to 4.8 per cent, a cut of 1.3 per cent in just three months. In itsWorld Economic Outlook released in Davos, Switzerland, the IMF has said "amore subdued growth forecast for India accounts for the lion's share of thedownward revisions."

"Given the size of the Indian economy in the global GDPright now, if you have a significant downward revision for India, then it doeshave an impact on global growth so we revised global growth down for 2019 by0.1% and the vast majority of that comes from the downgrade for India," MsGopinath told NDTV at Davos.

"If you look at the numbers which came out of the firstquarters of the fiscal year 2019, they were weaker than we had anticipated lastOctober and so, if you take those numbers into account and if you look at theweakness in credit growth in India, that is factored into our forecast for 2019and 2020," she added.

In its report, the IMF said it believes there has been a''downward revision to India's projection, where domestic demand has slowedmore sharply than expected amid stress in the nonbank financial sector and adecline in credit growth.'' 

The biggest issue, Ms Gopinath said, is in the financialspace. "If you look at the financial sectors, you have stress there,particularly with non-bank financial corporations. We have seen a tremendousweakness in the credit growth, business sentiment as there appears to be quitesharply an increase in risk aversion in lending in the markets.  Alongside that, there has been weakness inrural income growth.''

There is an expectation, however, that there would be anuptick in GDP growth by 2021 to 6.5 per cent, "supported by monetary andfiscal stimulus as well as subdued oil prices".

The IMF report has also highlighted a link between''intensifying social unrest across many countries-reflecting, in some cases,the erosion of trust in established institutions and lack of representation ingovernance structures.'' 

Asked whether this referred to India, Ms Gopinath said,"I have nothing really significant to say. It is something we will followand we will see what this does in our next assessment in April".

As of now, she said, it was important to ensure that nationsare protecting the vulnerable and "they are not left behind in the growthstory".