India’s GDP to reach US$5 trillion by 2025, World Bank told

WASHINGTON - With economic reforms adopted in the last few years starting to bear fruit, India is poised to remain the fastest growing large economy in the world, and its GDP is expected to reach US$5 trillion by 2025, a top Indian official has told the World Bank.

“India is poised to remain the fastest-growing large economy in the world. In 2018, we expect India to grow at over 7.4%,” economic affairs secretary Subhash Chandra Garg told the 97th meeting of the Development Committee of the World Bank in Washington on Saturday.

 “In the last few years, India has undertaken massive structural reforms toward formalisation of the economy and fostering digital financial inclusion,” he said, adding that the country had grown at an average of 7.2% per annum in the last four years and was continuing on the trajectory of sustained growth.

“India’s GDP is expected to reach a volume of $5 trillion by FY2025 by leveraging on digitisation, globalisation, favourable demographics and structural reforms,” Garg said.

Transformational reforms such as Goods and Services Tax (GST), and initiatives such as Insolvency and Bankruptcy code, recapitalisation of banks, and unclogging of infrastructure investments would support such elevated growth, he told the World Bank.

In the absence of the Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Garg is leading the Indian delegation for the annual Spring Meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

India, he said, had accorded top priority to addressing its infrastructure deficit to sustain economic growth. Steps had been taken to mobilise funds from various sources for development of infrastructure which included the launching of innovative financial vehicles.

India has begun undertaking a major programme of monetising brown field assets of Central Public Sector Undertakings (CPSUs) as a separate asset class for infrastructure investments, Garg said.  (ATI).