Market researcher Nielsen India on Tuesday maintained a stable outlook for India’s fast-moving consumer goods sector that has been reeling under a slump in consumer demand across urban and rural households. In its annual forecast for the sector, Nielsen said it expects fast-moving consumer goods to post a 9-10% value growth for the full year, in line with a 9.7% growth rate reported for the year ended December 31, 2019. Nielsen follows a January-December year. In 2018, the FMCG industry grew 13.5%.
On Tuesday, the company that tracks demand for goods of daily use across retail channels also posted its quarterly update for the fourth quarter of 2019. For the fourth quarter, the FMCG sector grew at 7.3% across India, a sharp drop from the high double-digit growth it registered in the year-ago period. The insights firm that tracks sales of goods such as soaps, biscuits, and shampoos online has also included e-commerce sales in its latest quarterly forecast for the sector.
“The last quarter of 2019 saw the FMCG industry grow at 6.6%, and 7.3% along with e-commerce, indicating an arrest as against the sharp slowdown witnessed in the previous quarters. In the fourth quarter of 2018, the FMCG sector grew in high double digits at 15.7%,” Nielsen said in its eighth edition of the quarterly FMCG Snapshot.
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