Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman attends the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Annual Business Summit 2024 to be held in Recent Delhi on May 17, 2024 | Photo source: ANI
India’s manufacturing sector needs to improve its products more and the government will assess how to provide policy support in this endeavor, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on May 17, rejecting “advice from some economists that India should no longer seek to escalate production.”
“The manufacturing industry needs to grow and with the assist of policies, India needs to escalate its share in manufacturing and global value chains,” Ms. Sitharaman said, adding that this will also assist India become more self-reliant. Citing a recent report by the Capgemini Research Institute, the Minister said that 65% of nearly 760 senior executives surveyed in the US and Europe plan to significantly escalate manufacturing investments in India with the aim of reducing their dependence on China.
Ms Sitharaman, in her speech at the annual business summit of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), also pointed to S&P Global Market Intelligence’s assessment that the Indian market could create trillion-dollar opportunities by 2031, with the consumer market expected to double by then .
While the consumer market offers a $2.9 trillion opportunity, food spending is expected to grow to $1.4 trillion by 2031 and financial services to reach $670 billion, creating a total of another $1.39 opportunity trillion dollars, said the Minister, referring to the S&P report.
“In India, skill levels are really growing, so a demographic dividend that will continue for the next 30 years [and] comes with the added advantage of historically lowest dependency ratio, which means the net benefit will be a greater escalate in consumption,” she said. She stressed that investment and expansion plans to capitalize on these opportunities could assist accelerate economic growth, especially with bank and corporate balance sheets in rosy health.
Attributing India’s continued high growth to “policy stability, no flip-flops, corruption-free decision-making” coupled with “facilitations in legislative and regulatory framework” based on industry feedback on rapid changes in the compliance regime, Ms Sitharaman said the government sees the sector private as a development partner, acting as both a facilitator and an enabler.
“We are confident that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will return with a huge majority. Therefore, soon after the formation of the government, we look forward to working more decisively with CII to see what can best be done in the July budget, which will be the budget for the entire year,” Ms Sitharaman said.
