Vice President Mr. Venkaiah Naidu, Minister of Commerce & Industry Mr. Suresh Prabhu and Finance Minister Mr. Piyush Goyal are all talking in unison of a new India marching towards becoming a USD 5 trillion economy by 2025.
Niti Aayog too has unveiled plans to make India a USD 5 trillion economy, but by 2030. In its much acclaimed “Strategy for New India at 75”, Niti Aayog has envisioned to accelerate growth to 8-9% and make the country a 5-trillion dollars economy by 2030. It hopes achieve this goal through focus on doubling of farmers’ income, boosting Make in India, upgrading the science, technology and innovation ecosystem, and promoting sunrise sectors like fintech and tourism.
Niti Aayog is expecting a growth target of about 8 per cent during 2018-23, so as to raise the economy’s size in real terms from USD 2.7 trillion in 2017-18 to nearly USD 4 trillion by 2022-23 and then accelerate the growth further to 9-10 per cent there onwards. The Indian economy grew at 6.7% in 2017-18. It is also envisioning a rise in per capita incomes from about USD 1900 in 2017-18 to around USD 3000 in 2022-23.
Remarkably, from being the 11th largest economy in the world in 2013-14, India already has reached on the 6th pedestal enroute to its upward movement.
Question is what policies will help India achieve this big target? One of the most crucial roles will be played by Ministry of Commerce and Industry, if India is to achieve this goal.
In this regard, Mr. Suresh Prabhu has highlighted some of the important initiatives and achievements of the Department of Commerce during the last 4 years that have aided in bolstering this goal. Its focused plan including boosting services sector contribution to USD 3 trillion, manufacturing to USD 1 trillion and agriculture to USD 1 trillion.
The Ministry has created a corpus of USD 1 billion to boost 12 champion sectors in services and it is working on releasing the New Industrial Policy keeping in mind the demands of the future. All these efforts are darted towards achieving the goal of India becoming a USD 5 trillion economy.
This initiative will enhance the competitiveness of India’s service sectors through the implementation of focused and monitored Action Plans, thereby promoting GDP growth, creating more jobs and promoting exports to global markets.
The Commerce Ministry is working closely with the Finance Ministry to boost trade further by easing credit flow to the export sector, especially small exporters to ensure adequate availability of funds to them.
Agricultural Export Policy launched for the first time by Ministry of Commerce is to play a big role in making India a global power in the agricultural sector and double farmers’ income by 2022. The policy seeks to harness the export potential of Indian agriculture through suitable policy instruments and to make India a global power in agriculture. It envisages boosting India’s agricultural exports to USD 60 billion by 2022 thereby assisting the Agriculture Ministry in achieving the target of USD 100 billion and to integrate Indian farmers and the high quality agricultural products with global value chains.
IndusFood 2019, which saw a business transaction of more than USD 1.2 bn too contributed in its own way in helping India achieve this target.
India commerce initiatives are on track and marching towards growth and prosperity; a fact universally being recognized as a bright spot of the global economy.
