Finance secretary T V Somanathan on Thursday said India will continue to clock the highest growth rate among the top five economies in the world in the foreseeable future and asked Indian diaspora to act as a catalyst and supplement government efforts in making India the biggest opportunity.
India is currently the fifth largest economy in the world. The top four are US, China, Japan and Germany.
An S&P Global report had earlier this month projected India's economy to double to USD 6.7 trillion by 2031, from USD 3.4 trillion currently.
"India is already the world's fifth largest economy and it is the largest country by population. India's rate of growth by any measurement is much faster than the top four. Today we can safely say that all four are likely to have lower growth rates than India in the foreseeable future.
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"... in terms of the size of opportunity, India is arguably the biggest development opportunity of the future because we are large and we are growing faster than the other large economies," Somanathan said in his address at the Indiaspora G20 forum.
The Indian economy grew at the rate of 7.2 per cent in 2022-23 and economists peg GDP growth to be in the range of 6-6.5 per cent in the current fiscal (April-March).
The top bureaucrat in the finance ministry asserted that India is the "most beautiful opportunity in the world" and the extent to which India harness this opportunity will mainly depend not on diaspora but on India's domestic policies and domestic population.
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He said there are three channels through which diaspora can influence -- fund flow, trade and knowledge.
"If we do the right things, and we are doing the right things right now, then you can be a catalyst and a strong accelerator in what India can achieve," he said, adding in India's present stage of development knowledge transfer would be increasingly important.
India is the biggest country in terms of population and all challenges are of mega size. India is facing the challenges and we have the ability to tackle them.
"You need to be patient with India... We can have a zig-zag line to progress, but we will keep progressing," Somanathan added.
In the coming years, investment may be more important than philanthropy, technology transfer may be more important than investment and your knowledge may be more important than money.
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