One thing is certain about the global economy: a slowdown is under way. What we do not know is how big the problem is because the official numbers from China and India, the biggest emerging markets, do not add up.

At the National People’s Congress, the annual parliamentary session that started yesterday in Beijing, China lowered its official growth target to “around 7 per cent”[check tmrw for annoucement] but that number is 2 to 3 percentage points higher than many independent estimates of the current growth rate. Last month, India’s government used a new method to claim its economy would grow 8 per cent this year, reaffirming its boast that it is growing faster than China. Many outsiders doubt India’s claim too.

The problem in both countries is that the official growth number is much higher than the sum of its parts. Economic growth is the total of growth in investment, trade and spending by consumers and government; many investors are doing the maths and finding that those parts do not add up to a 7 per cent pace for China or India. [sources to follow]China’s economy is driven mainly by investment, which has slowed sharply. India’s is driven by consumers and consumption of everything from[new word to follow] motorbikes to restaurant meals has been falling.[sources t/c]