Even as the Government is hoping to make India a regional manufacturing hub through the Make in India campaign, the Finance Ministry’s Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian on Saturday said that India can grow at 8 per cent to 10 per cent through a combination of high exports and a focus on manufacturing as well as services.
“India can’t deviate from the historical experience and grow at eight per cent without rapid exports and just depending on domestic demand,” he said at a panel discussion on Asian Growth Models at the Advancing Asia conference of the International Monetary Fund.
He further said that it is possible to harness the Make in India campaign but instead of growth being led just by manufacturing, it has to be through a combination of manufacturing and services.
“We can have a uniquely India model, which is export-led but not just uniquely focused on manufacturing,” he said.
He also raised concerns over recent comments by Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s frontrunner for the US presidential elections on scrapping the H1 B Visa and its impact on the Indian growth model. “His comments are very worrying about our model of growth,” Subramanian said.
Echoing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s comments that India is a haven of macroeconomic stability, Subramanian said the government is taking a number of steps to accelerate growth and States are competing with each other, which has added to the dynamism of the Indian economy.
He also said that good performance by governments is being rewarded at the polls.
China
Commenting on the Chinese slowdown, he said there is a need for a coordinated fiscal response at the global level to address it.
“The puzzle is not China slowing down, the puzzle is why it didn’t slowdown earlier,” he said.