Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday said that the logistics cost to GDP in India will come down from 13 per cent to 7.5 per cent in five years which is important to make country’s exports globally competitive.

In his address at the annual session of Assocham, Amit Shah, who also doubles up as minister of cooperation, said the government under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has planned to invest about ₹100-lakh crore in infrastructure. He said that in 2014 the length of National Highways was 91,000 km which has increased to 1.46 lakh km now.

Plan to reduce logistics cost

According to him, the logistics cost in India is 13 per cent of the GDP which is higher than the 8 per cent in the rest of the world. “We will have to remove the eight per cent and 13 per cent gap. We have formulated a framework for the next five years. I can assure you that we will reach 7.5 per cent logistics cost in the next five years,” he said at the Assocham’s annual session 2023 — “Bharat@100: Paving the way for inclusive and sustainable global growth”.

Shah said that the PM has set two goals for the country. Firs, India should be a fully developed nation by 2047 and second, to make India a $5 trillion economy by 2025. To achieve these two goals, PM Modi has laid a strong foundation in 9 years. India’s total export of merchandise goods in 2022 was $421 billion, Shah said adding that FDI of $83 billion came to the country, and there are more than 70,000 start-ups out of which 116 are unicorns.

Time for change

Crediting Modi with the country’s overall turn around, he stated that the government with foresighted approach created an environment in the country that took decisions, made policies and implemented them with firmness. He said that in 2014, when Modi came to power, the per capita income of the country was ₹68,000, which is ₹1.72 lakh rupees today.

The minister said that India’s share in the global GDP in 2014 was 2.60 per cent, since then it was increased to 3.40 per cent by March 31, 2022. He said the share in global FDI inflow was 2.10 per cent in 2014; this has increased to 6.70 per cent in 2022. Shah said the time has come for the Indian industry to change its size and scale under the leadership of the PM Modi.

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