NEW DELHI : The World Bank has estimated that India will need to grow 7.8% on an average over the next 22 years to become a high-income economy by 2047 and underlined the need for a series of reforms to achieve the goal.
The latest India Country Economic Memorandum, released on Friday, said India’s growth at an average 6.3% between 2000 and 2024 provided the foundation, but meeting its ambitions was “not be possible in a business-as-usual scenario” as per capita income needed to increase by eight times the current levels.
“To meet this target, given the less conducive external environment, India would need to not only maintain ongoing initiatives but in fact expand and intensify reforms,” it said.
One of the key areas flag ged for improvement was an increase in productivity, an area where India had lagged as three-fourths of the population was still dependent on farming and traditional market services and construction. It also said that India’s economy was less open to trade, which hindered productivity. The report once again underlined the need for the private sector to step up investment and highlighted land reforms and labour market reforms as focus areas.
While stating that India could do more to leverage the “demographic dividend”, the World Bank also cautioned that time was running out and underlined the need to not just create more jobs, but also better jobs. The report recommended incentivising the private sector to invest in job-rich sectors like agro-processing manufacturing, hospitality and transportation.