Dev said high business costs, too few mid-sized firms and difficulty in acquiring land are holding India back.
India is well placed to gain from the redrawing of global supply chains, but high business costs, a shortage of mid-sized firms and difficulty in acquiring land are holding back a broader industrial transformation, S Mahendra Dev, chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM), said on Thursday.
Speaking at an event organised by the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development (ISID), Dev said that in just one year India’s share of smartphones shipped to the United States rose from about one in eight to more than four in ten. Electronics exports have grown more than eightfold in a decade.
“Market access by itself does not win orders. Global buyers go to production systems that offer scale, competitive cost and consistent quality,” he said.
On what he called the “missing middle”, Dev said India has firms with 10 to 20 workers at one end and large firms at the other. He said land availability was among the major challenges identified by industrialists.
He outlined a three-pronged strategy: strengthening competitiveness across all firms, supporting both employment-generating and technologically advanced industries and working through states, districts and industrial clusters.
Source: Business Standard
