New Delhi: Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal has stressed that the government along with the industry should work on a bigger goal to make India a developed country and aspire to become a much larger economy by 2047. “If we all put our best foot forward and aspire for a double-digit growth, we can be much bigger,” he added.

Addressing the FICCI’s National Executive Committee meeting here recently, Goyal said that India has tremendous potential with a large talent pool both to encourage design manufacturing services and the manufacturing eco-system. “Manufacturing and innovation go hand in hand,” he said.

Speaking on inflation, Goyal said that over the last eight years including the current slightly elevated levels, the CAGR inflation is under 4.5 per cent through our tenure. “When the other countries have double digit inflation, India continues at a moderate 7 per cent. There is monitoring of prices by the government on a daily basis. We are looking at, in the next few months, inflation coming back within the RBI’s band of 2-6 per cent,” he added.

Goyal also said that the world has huge expectations from India and the world is looking at India from a long-term perspective. “The world expectation is also that India will drive global growth, provide the talent pool that the world needs, and India will power technologies both from the perspective of development and its usage. It is the innovation and the spirit of enquiry that is prevalent across the country,” he said.

The Minister also said that e-commerce in India is growing and to ensure transparency to customers the government is working on democratizing the e-commerce sector. “Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) is about giving customers choice - fairly and transparently. It’s about giving a bigger market to sellers, and it will help in creating small entrepreneurs,” stated Goyal.

Sanjiv Mehta, President, FICCI, said that the thrust given by the government to Atma Nirbhar Bharat is helping the industry to tide over the challenging times. He further added that the government has announced a slew of policy measures including the beta testing of ONDC. “We believe that like Aadhar and UPI, the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) can be another game-changer incubator in India, and it can be replicated by the rest of the world,” he added. /BI/