India can be a China-like global growth powerhouse of 2020s, but it needs to address several challenges including infrastructure and gender gap to realise the potential, Economist Intelligence Unit sa
India can be a China-like global growth powerhouse of 2020s, but it needs to address several challenges including infrastructure and gender gap to realise the potential, Economist Intelligence Unit said.
“India is the only country that has the potential to change the world in the 2020s in the way that China changed it in the 2000s. It will probably take a little longer than that before India really takes off but, even so, it is going to be a global growth powerhouse of the 2020s,” EIU’s Chief Economist Simon Baptist said.
In a newsletter, Mr Baptist further said that a key driver could be expanding India’s industrial base. Acknowledging that this was indeed the idea behind the government’s ‘Make in India’ campaign, a policy to turn the country into a manufacturing hub, he said “the preconditions for a China-style take-off of manufacturing do not yet exist in India”.
“Basic skills and education are at a much lower level than they were in China in 2001, when its manufacturing sector globalised. There is a huge gender gap. A long-standing electricity deficit and massive infr-astructure needs from urbanisation are also key challenges,” he said.
On positive side, India has one thing that China has — the potential to be of interest as a huge market in its own right, as well as a base for export manufacturing.
