'Manufacturing sector will soon own 20% share of GDP'

Mumbai (Maharashtra): Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Suresh Prabhu said the contribution of India's manufacturing sector to the national gross domestic product (GDP) would increase to 20 percent in the coming months.

"The contribution of manufacturing sector to the national GDP will rise to as high as 20 percent in the future. Sector-wise work is on, to achieve this. New industries will drive future growth, and the government is working with industries to identify what these new sectors are going to be," he said at the inaugural session of the India Economic Summit 2018 here on Friday.

Taking cognizance of India's trade deficit with China, Prabhu said agreements have been signed with China to help reduce.

"A new economic paradigm is being created for New India. States will drive growth in future, districts will facilitate it and the Central Government will give an umbrella cover for this growth," he added.

The Commerce Minister stated that the service sector will continue to be a strong growth driver of the national economy, while the government is working on increasing the productivity of the agriculture sector as well.

While the next wave of growth, Prabhu said, will happen due to a surge in Indian entrepreneurship, he emphasised on the need to work on improving the tax-GDP ratio.

Prabhu also noted that the government will soon announce a new cargo policy.

"We're in the process of setting up a task-force to prepare a road-map for making aircrafts in India. Local manufacturing of aircrafts will be one of the priorities as we'll be buying a large number of aircrafts over a period of time," he added.

Meanwhile, Minister of State (MoS) for Civil Aviation, Jayant Sinha, reiterated the government's commitment to creating a New India by 2022.

"Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the farm-to-factory model will not work for India. Given the serious natural resource challenges India faces, we need to focus instead on a farm-to-frontier model of development for national growth, meaning that we need to focus on the most cutting-edge and frontier industries such as automobiles and telecom. If we compete and win in such industries, we will be able to leapfrog to productivity frontiers that will take us forward in a significant way. We need to be the leaders in the drone ecosystem so that we can go from auto-rickshaws to air-rickshaws," he added.

Citing the recent structural reforms undertaken by the Centre such as the Goods and Services Tax (GST), Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and Direct Benefits Transfer programme, Sinha stressed on the need for India to graduate to a middle-income country, and achieve a three-fold increase in per-capita GDP - from USD 1,800 to USD 5,400.

"This (three-fold increase in per-capita GDP) is possible only by having a long-term GDP growth rate of 7 percent over the next 20 years. This is entirely within our capability, given our track record during the time since liberalisation," he added.

Apart from the above two ministers, Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal also attended the inaugural session of the two-day India Economic Summit 2018 being organised by the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE).