After landing a spacecraft on the moon, India is on a roll, putting the pedal to the metal to solidify its position as one of the locomotives driving the growth of the so-called ‘Global South’.
It now arises that the world’s most populous country wants to attain up to 8% annual GDP growth for several years.
New Delhi is focused on boosting its manufacturing capabilities, as the country offers a kinder face for Western investments, in contrast with its Chinese counterparts.
CNBC reported:
“’Every sector of the economy has seen a significant improvement in the manufacturing processes’, Union Minister for Railways, Communications, Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw said.
He highlighted that manufacturing in electronics, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and defense has seen great advancements and will tie into Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Make in India’ initiative that encourages companies to manufacture and assemble goods in the country.”
The minister’s comments came after the government’s interim budget of $133.9 billion in capital expenditure, an 11.1% jump from the prior year.
“’This budget will reinforce the process of making India which started 10 years back, [and] will lead to significant and consistent 7-8% growth rate for at least next five to seven years’ Vaishnaw told CNBC.”
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99% of the phones used in India were, at this point, made within the country, in a country expected to have 1 billion smartphone users by 2026.
India is set to move up from the fifth-largest consumer market to the third spot by 2027.
One key factor in India’s growth is fear. Global companies are all about geopolitical risk management now.
‘Reshoring’, ‘friendshoring’, and ‘nearshoring’ have become the ‘mots du jour’. So, firms are starting to pick India over China.
“This is largely spearheaded by warming ties between U.S. President Joe Biden and India’s Modi, with the former’s ‘friendshoring’ policy aimed at encouraging U.S. companies to diversify away from China making India an attractive alternative.
‘I would like to call it ‘trustshoring.’ They trust India as a country because it’s democratic, it has clear policy structure’, Vaishnaw said. ‘Very large manufacturers would like to actually set up mega electronic manufacturing clusters in our country’.”
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