The country needs to significantly increase employment and productivity levels to achieve a $5 trillion economy by 2024, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Senior Minister of Singapore, a renowned economist and a political personality, said on Tuesday.
Pointing out that job growth and productivity improvement are critical, Mr. Shanmugaratnam said, “To achieve a $5 trillion economy by 2024-25 and to ensure unemployment does not keep going up, India will have to create something like 140 million jobs over the next decade — half of that in the first half of the decade.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced the aim to achieve a $5 trillion dollar economy by 2024. But dwindling economic growth has made the task much tougher than thought earlier.
Productivity growth needed to be in the order of 7-8% per year, he said, while delivering the Third Suresh Tendulkar Memorial Lecture at the Reserve Bank of India.
“India is making a major effort to transform its society and economy. And it is going to take some time because it is starting from a heavy legacy of the past,” he said.
“Job growth and productivity growth are fundamental. “It is critical particularly for India because you have the largest young population in the world... much larger than China’s,” he added.
