NITI Aayog Chief Executive Officer BVR Subrahmanyam on Thursday said that India’s annual Gross Domestic Product growth needs to be 8%, and not 6.5%, if the country wants to achieve the target of becoming a developed economy by 2047, The Indian Express reported.

Subrahmanyam made the comment while pointing to the important role statistics needs to play in policymaking.

“This data business is very, very important for our goal of Viksit Bharat,” the newspaper quoted Subrahmanyam as saying. “After all, if you grow at 6.5%, you will not be Viksit Bharat; [if] you grow at 8%, you will be Viksit Bharat.”

Advertisement

He added: “It looks very small, 1.5%. But the difference, I tell you, in 2047 is going to be immense… What looks very minuscule can have major, major difference at the end.”

Subrahmanyam was speaking at a meeting of statistical advisers in ministries and departments.

In March, NITI Aayog member Arvind Virmani had said that India only needed an average real GDP growth rate of 6% to 6.2% to become a developed economy by 2047, the year India completes 100 years of independence, Moneycontrol reported.

Advertisement

The NITI Aayog is the main public policy think tank of the Union government.

On May 30, provisional estimates released by the Union government showed that India’s real GDP for the financial year 2024-’25 grew by 6.5%.

This was the slowest growth rate since the Covid-19 pandemic year of 2020-’21. In the financial year 2023-’24, the country’s real GDP was 9.2%.

The remark by Subrahmanyam came amid global economic headwinds.

United States President Donald Trump’s imposition of so-called reciprocal tariffs on dozens of countries, including a 25% levy on India, for not finalising trade agreements with Washington, has led to concerns of a broader trade war that could disrupt the global economy.

On August 6, Trump said he was doubling the levies on goods imported from India to 50% for purchasing Russian fuel.