Mumbai, February 14: India should focus on 10 key priorities, ranging from building a workforce ready for the future to enhancing manufacturing competitiveness and scaling up micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), to achieve the goal of "Viksit Bharat" by 2047, according to a new report.
The report from KPMG in India stated that the first step in building a future-ready workforce involves operationalizing education, skills, and employment, expanding apprenticeships, and developing deep technological capabilities so that talent is ready for jobs across manufacturing, services, and emerging technologies.
The report highlighted efforts to make manufacturing globally competitive through localizing components, adopting Industry 4.0, increasing factory productivity, and closely aligning clusters with exports and quality standards.
MSMEs should transition from a survival mode to a scale mode through cash-flow-based credit, cluster-led productivity programs, digital adoption, and structured export enablement linked to anchor supply chains.
Other priorities include integrated infrastructure and improving trade competitiveness through export diversification.
"Convert asset creation into system-level productivity by developing multimodal corridors, improving last-mile and industrial connectivity. Build corridor-led export ecosystems, leverage FTAs and CEPAs with sector-specific playbooks, and strengthen supply chain resilience in critical value chains," the business advisory firm noted.
Furthermore, the firm called on policymakers to accelerate transit-led development, strengthen municipal finance, expand affordable housing, and plan integrated city regions to make tier 2 and 3 locations growth engines of the country.
"Expand social security for informal workers, professionalize care infrastructure, and increase women's workforce participation to make growth broad-based," it said.
It highlighted the need to attract private capital, strengthen revenues at the Centre, State, and city levels, and shift to outcome-based budgeting supported by digital tracking to improve the quality of public spending.
"India has established a solid foundation, and now the focus shifts to execution by converting investment into greater productivity and consequently competitiveness. Our country's growth will be shaped by deep manufacturing capabilities, skilled talent, robust MSMEs, efficient infrastructure, and cities prepared for the future," said Yezdi Nagporewalla, CEO, KPMG in India.
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