Ahead of the Union Budget, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet economists and sectoral experts at NITI Aayog on Friday to discuss the state of the economy and measures to accelerate growth which is estimated to drop to 7 per cent, a senior government official said.

The official further said that the meeting will also be attended by several Union ministers.

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the 2023-24 Budget in Parliament on February 1, 2023. Hit by weakening demand, the Indian economy is expected to grow at a slower rate of 7 per cent in the current fiscal ending March 2023, setting the stage for the country losing the fastest-growing major economy tag.

The 7 per cent expansion projected in the first official estimate released by the statistics ministry compares with 8.7 per cent gross domestic product (GDP) growth in 2021-22.

The projections are much lower than government's earlier forecast of 8-8.5 per cent growth but above the Reserve Bank's projection of 6.8 per cent. If the forecast comes true, India's GDP growth will be lower than Saudi Arabia's expected 7.6 per cent expansion.

In fact, India's GDP growth in the July-September quarter at 6.3 per cent was lower than the 8.7 per cent growth rate of Saudi Arabia.