Nagheshwaran, the Indian government's chief economic adviser, said in an exclusive interview with Jiji Press that India is expected to overtake Japan by the end of March 2027 to rise to the world's fourth-largest nominal GDP, after the United States, China and Germany. The initially anticipated overtaking of Japan during 2026 has not materialized. Citing India's economic strengths, he pointed to growth of 7.8 percent year on year in the April-to-June quarter of 2026, analyzing that "it cannot be said that there are many weaknesses," and took pride in the fact that, compared with Western countries, "India is achieving better results in job creation and income expansion." On the other hand, he also noted that youth unemployment is pronounced among women in urban areas and that improvement has been slow. The International Monetary Fund predicted in 2025 that India would overtake Japan in nominal GDP as early as 2026, but it later pushed back the timing of the reversal to 2027. Nagheshwaran pointed out that the primary reason was that India's statistics bureau reduced the size of GDP when it revised the base year for GDP, stressing that "this is evidence showing that we are not using a change in methodology as a pretext for inflating the figures."