Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, on November 27, said that economic growth might have slowed down but there was no impending threat of a recession. She said this in response to a discussion in the Rajya Sabha on the economic situation of the country.

"Growth may have come down, but not a recession yet, and won't be a recession ever," FM Sitharaman said.

A recession is typically defined as a period of negative economic growth over two consecutive quarters.

Defending the current state of the Indian economy, the finance minister said that every step that had been taken by the government was aimed at development. She cited macro-economic data to draw a comparison between the growth situation between the five years from 2009 to 2014 under the UPA-II government and the next five years under the BJP-led NDA regime.

She highlighted that, at the end of the period 2009-14, India's real GDP growth rate stood at 6.4 percent while the same was at 7.5 percent at the end of 2014-19.

Also, core inflation at the end of the UPA-II government was 9.4 percent while it stood at 5.1 percent at the end of the BJP-led NDA's five-year term ending 2019, Sitharaman said. She added that food inflation had also touched 11.2 percent by the end of 2014 while it was at 3.5 percent at the end of 2019.