Projections get predicted on conservative estimates, rest assured imf is a party to it. What that list shows is the figures and not the basis imf has taken to make those calculations, if they could have shared those, they have done a great service.
Anyways, the thing I noticed on this thread is that people don’t quite understand the concept of nominal gdp.
If nominal gdp is calculated in usd terms, four figures become critical to its calculation:
1 real growth rate achieved during the fiscal.
2 inflation figure for the fiscal.
3 exchange rate at the time of calculating the nominal gdp.
4 base year used.
What people on this thread have been focusing on has just been the real growth rate figures, which is just one aspect.
My assumption is pakistan should have 5-6% average real growth rate for the next 5 years, but then one cant really project inflation figures for pakistan which generally hover in double digits, which in normal estimates is regarded as overheating of the economy. Now if we take this as a base, then pakistan should be around 300b usd by fiscal 2015.
Someone posted 7% average for next 5 years, that can be achieved for one fiscal or the other but I seriously doubt pakistan has the capacity to sustain it over a longish timeline of 5years. There are serious constraints pakistan economy faces, and certainly one of capacity, mind you pakistan did around 8% when musharraf was at the helm but then they soon found out they just could not sustain it beyond that fiscal.
On a similar pretext the estimates taken for india are way too conservative, where from what I know, they have based their calculations on 7% real growth rate, though not sure of what inflation figure has been used, since we also do not know the exchange rate used to do those calculations. Realistically, india should achieve anywhere between 8-10% real growth (given when our avg real growth rate for the last 5 years has been well over 8%), with 4-5% inflation and with an exchange rate of around rs40/usd. And by these estimates indian gdp by fiscal 2015 should certainly be around 2.5t usd.
The above two assumptions are based on no external shocks such as EU debt crisis, etc.
Someone on this thread said that there was a time india’s percapita nominal gdp was half to that of pakistan. yes true, and the year was 1993, when our percapita gdp was a mere 53% of that of pakistan, but look at the strides taken by india during this time period, where imf, world bank and cia fact book today calculate a better percapita income for india compared to Pakistan, and if imf figures are to be taken then they give india a clear advantage of 10% over pakistan. is this something to be proud of, certainly not, since india has miles to go and our benchmark has to be the top most industrialized nations of the world, as we see ourselves amongst the top 3 economies of the world within next decade and a half.