India’s services activity books fastest growth rate in 13 years on strong demand: PMI data

India's dominant services sector continued its robust performance as total sales rose at the quickest pace since June 2010, PMI data released on Thursday showed.

S&P Global's India services purchasing managers' index rose to 62.3 in July from June's 58.5. Analysts at Reuters had pegged a dip to 58.0. India's services PMI has remained above the 50-mark, which separates growth from expansion for two years.

While India’s manufacturing sector PMI dipped to 57.7 in July, robust services activity propelled the overall S&P Global India Composite PMI Output Index to a 13-year high of 61.9.


"The resilience of the service sector underscores its vital role in fuelling India's economy, with the PMI results for July so far pointing to a notable contribution from the sector to overall GDP for the second fiscal quarter," noted Pollyanna De Lima, economics associate director at S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Overall demand remained strong. While the new business sub-index showed demand had risen since August 2021, the pace of growth was the highest since June 2010. International demand also gathered steam, rising significantly in July and was the second-strongest since the series started in September 2014.

According to panellists surveyd, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the UAE were key sources of growth, the release said.

Operating costs rose at the fastest pace since June 2022 and firms passed on some of that burden to customers, albeit at the slowest pace in three months as they were cautious about their pricing strategies.

"Looking at PMI price indices in recent months, it seems that competitive advantage continued to support demand for Indian services, with increases in output prices here modest relative to several other nations," added De Lima.

Although the future activity sub-index, which measures optimism, slipped from June's six-month high over concerns surrounding extreme weather, the year-ahead outlook remained strong.

Firms continued to add headcount, stretching the current sequence of hiring to more than a year. However, little-changed from June the rate of hiring remained weak.