India needs to grow at 8-9% for 20 years to become developed country by 2047: Deloitte’s Romal Shetty

India needs to grow at 8-9% for the next 20 years to become a developed nation by 2047 as envisioned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Deloitte South Asia CEO Romal Shetty said.

He said India can benefit from the ‘China plus one’ strategy as no other country can offer the scale and size of operations as is available in India.

Referring to the space sector, Mr. Shetty said India already has 200 start-ups and can attract investments of $100 billion by 2040.

“We need to grow at 8-9% till at least 2047 to become a developed economy…. moving away from middle income level… To grow at that pace is not easy. Very few countries in the world have been able to grow at a pace of 8-9% year-on -year,” Mr. Shetty told PTI.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a recent interview to PTI said India will be in the top three economies in the near future. “By 2047, I am sure that our country will be among the developed countries. Our economy will be even more inclusive and innovative,” he had said.

India is currently the fifth largest economy in the world, after the U.S., China, Japan and Germany. An S&P Global report had last month projected India’s economy to double to $6.7 trillion by 2031, from $3.4 trillion currently.

Mr. Shetty also said India can look for opportunities in the agriculture, space sectors, and other sunrise areas such as semi-conductor and electric vehicles. He further said the country is building roads at a ‘frantic pace’ of 16,000-18,000 km a year, which in turn boosts development and trade.

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“Multinational companies are looking at ‘China plus one’. There is no doubt about that. While there are other countries that will benefit when companies decide to move their manufacturing to somewhere else apart from China, no other country has the scale and size as India has,” Mr. Shetty added.

He said the big challenge that India is facing is import of crude oil. Similarly, even though technology has transformed the country, it can be divisive and there are biases in Artificial Intelligence (AI). “These are things we should be concerned about”.