Economy Has High Blood Pressure: Shobhana Kamineni, Top Apollo Executive

The Indian economy is in a state of "high blood pressure", Shobana Kamineni, executive vice chairperson of Apollo Hospitals, told NDTV. The comments from the top healthcare professional come at a time the country's economy is facing the worst pace of growth in nearly five years.

Ms Kamineni, a top executive at one of India's leading private healthcare providers, was speaking on NDTV's show Executive Decision on the looming slowdown in India's economy.

"Every country goes through its stresses and our country has a few more going on. It's global stresses, it's environment stresses, it's job stresses, it's tensions that are coming from all over. So I would say that we're in a state of high blood pressure," she said.

Shobana Kamineni is the daughter of Apollo Hospitals chairman Prathap C Reddy.

A downturn in the economy is denting sales, forcing companies to curtail production and raising hopes that the government will unveil an economic stimulus to revive growth.

Ms Kamineni also pointed to growing concerns of shrinking demand, led by a drop in consumer spending, a phenomenon she described as an epidemic.

"Whenever we boasted about being the fastest growing economy in the world, even after demonetisation that kicked us back, consumer demand (continued to grow). But all of a sudden, you're seeing it (fall) everywhere. Postponing of purchasing is spreading to many sectors... and it's almost like an epidemic," she told NDTV.

Asked why, she said people don't believe that their lives are going to get better in the future. "We used to be among the most optimistic indices of the world that India would really feature in the top tem. But all of a sudden, when you see consumer growth going away, they think that they're going to be under stress, their jobs are going to be under stress," Ms Kamineni said.