Online Guest lecture - “How to steer the path to make India a 5 trillion dollar economy"
Event Date: 03rd June 2024
An online guest lecture was organized on the topic: “How to steer path to make India a 5 trillion dollar economy?”, on 3rd June, 2024, Monday, from 11:50 am- 12:40 pm in room A-107. The resource person for the session was Dr. Radhika Pandey, Associate Professor, Economics, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), New Delhi. It was attended by 91 students from BA(H) Political Science semester IV and BA(H) Economics semester IV.
The expert started by highlighting the bright spots on the economic scenario in India, viz., India is the fastest growing large economy in the world today. It overtook UK last year and is on course to surpass Japan in 2026 and Germany in 2027 to become the world’s third-largest economy. Also, inflation is easing and is likely to inch closer to the 4 percent target this year. She also pointed out that just 10 years back, the economy was grappling with high inflation, persistent deficits and a weak banking sector, riddled with high proportion of non-performing assets.
In this direction, public sector banks and private sector banks NPAs (bad loans) continue declining. Buoyant GDP growth is taking place amidst global headwinds.
After tracing the current economic landscape, the expert discussed the future path that must be adopted to achieve the goal of a 5 trillion dollar economy.
She explained that private investment needs a sustained pick up. Private consunption growth has been weak. Also, agriculture needs to become resilient to climate change related challenges. At the same time, job crisis needs to be addressed. The expert indicated that export growth needs a further boost.
The expert emphasized that labour force participation and unemployment needs attention. The overall labour force participation rate is just 50 percent! In fact, female labour force participation rate is even lower. She pointed out that those who are employed, their quality of jobs needs improvement. Most of the job growth is happening in the self-employed category.
The expert highlighted that exports need to pick up to take advantage of the China plus one strategy. She also stated that India needs to improve in ease of doing business and coverage of Free Trade Areas. India already has a distinct comparative advantage in services, particularly IT, engineering services.
The session concluded with a question and answer round.
Department Name – Department of Humanities
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