New Delhi, Nov 30 (PTI) India is poised to become thethird largest economy in the world in the next few years,Union Minister Suresh Prabhu said today, asserting that thegovernment wants to take manufacturing to 20 per cent of theGDP, helped by SMEs.
"One of the great strategies we have is to bring economicdevelopment, take our manufacturing to at least 20 per cent ofthe GDP.
"So you can imagine that in the next few years time wewill have USD 5 trillion of GDP, so USD 1 trillion of thatwill come from manufacturing and the substantial part of that,we are aiming to get from small and medium enterprises(SMEs)," he said.
Therefore, he said, the government is trying to be a partof the global supply chains, identifying and creatingopportunities.
"In the process we will be very happy to collaborate withour friends from Africa, from other developing countries,to be a part of this process," Prabhu said.
Addressing a conference on SMEs here, the Commerce &Industry Minister expressed happiness saying "global recoveryseems to be on the anvil". However, he observed that therecovery would have been faster had nations put even a smallamount of money into SMEs.
He said the global recession in 2008 started when somecountries said that there were banks which were too largeto fail, hence pumping in billions of dollars in those banks.
"But they forgot that there are small enterprises whichare too small to succeed. The banks are too big to fail, butthe small enterprises are too small to succeed. So even ifthey had put a small amount of money into SMEs, by this timethe global recovery would have been faster," Prabhu said.
The minister described small enterprises as the backboneof the global economy, highlighting that they contributesignificantly to India's exports and create large employment.
PTI RSNANU.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.