Economic Measures Suggested by McKinsey

Economic Measures Suggested by McKinsey

• Recently, the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) has released a report titled 'India's turning point: An economic agenda to spur growth and jobs'.
• The report identifies a reform agenda that could be implemented in the next 12 to 18 months to increase productivity and create jobs.

Data Analysis:

• Increasing Workforce: Given the increasing urbanisation and population trends, there will be 90 million additional workers in search of non-farm jobs by 2030.
• Triple Job Creation: To cater to that, India will have to triple job creation to 12 million gainful non-farm jobs per year from the 4 million achieved between 2013 to 2018.
• Required GDP Growth: The Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is set to contract by over 5% in 2020-21, needs to go up to 8-8.5% per annum for the next decade to create the opportunities in the post Covid-19 era.
• Promising Sectors: Manufacturing and the construction sectors offer the most opportunities for economic growth and also for higher employment.
• Risk of Stagnation: The country risks a decade of stagnating incomes and quality of life if urgent steps are not taken to spur growth.

Measures Suggested:

• Global Shift: Global trends such as digitization and automation, shifting supply chains, urbanization, rising incomes and demographic shifts, and a greater focus on sustainability, health, and safety can become the hallmarks of the post pandemic economy.
• Higher Productivity through Privatisation: Privatisation of 30 or so of the largest state-owned enterprises to potentially double their productivity.
• Government also had a focus on privatisation under the Aatmanirbhar Bharat Package.
• Sector Specific Focus: Framing sector-specific pro-growth policies to attract investment in manufacturing, real estate, agriculture, healthcare and retail.
• Labour Reforms: Creation of flexible labour markets for industry with better benefits and safety nets for workers.
• Improvement in Infrastructure: India needs to unlock supply in land markets to reduce land costs by 20-25%, enable efficient power distribution to reduce commercial and industrial tariffs by 20-25%; and improve the ease and reduce the cost of doing business.
• Going Big: India needs to triple its number of large firms having revenues of over USD 500 million.
• Efficient Financing: Streamlining fiscal resources can deliver USD 2.4 trillion in investment while boosting entrepreneurship by lowering the cost of capital for enterprises by about 3.5 percentage points.
• Measures are required to channel more household savings to capital markets, to reduce the cost of credit intermediation, and to streamline government finance.
• Bad Bank: Creation of a ‘bad bank’ can take care of the inoperative assets.
• Responsibility for Reforms: A bulk 60% of the reforms will have to be undertaken by states and the remaining 40% by the Centre.

Source: Mint