Raising productivity and investment will be the key to accelerate economic growth: NITI Aayog's Suman Bery

India needs to raise productivity and investment rate with enhanced private investments and supply side reforms to accelerate the potential economic growth needed to help the country become Viksit Bharat by 2047, NITI Aayog vice chairman Suman Bery said.

“Private investment must lead India’s growth push, as fiscal space for public spending is limited,” Bery said while speaking at the Isaac Centre for Public Policy (ICPP) growth conference on Saturday.

“Supply side reforms including raising national savings, attracting foreign capital and improving returns to investment,” will be the key to unlocking private investments in the country.

According to Bery, enhancing the marginal efficiency of capital via policy certainty and macroeconomic stability can shift investment demand outward.

“Higher investments lead to more capital, enhanced job creation, sectoral shifts, improved productivity and hence stronger growth,” he said.

“The global turmoil could be an opportunity for India and there is no time to lose when it comes to moving on a faster growth trajectory,” he said, adding India can leverage demographic dividend, technology and geopolitical churn to accelerate growth.

As per the government estimates, India’s economy grew 6.4% in FY25 and is forecast to expand at around the same rate in the current fiscal.

Bery is of the view that sustained higher growth in the long-run would also require strengthening the relation of the Centre with states, private sector, its citizens and the world, through targeted measures.

“The need is to simplify tax policy and regulations and enhance the ease of doing business for the private sector while the trade and investment policy and the economic diplomacy will be the key for striger relation with the world,” he said.

“Since a one-size fit all approach will not work, the country needs state-specific measures by the Centre and policy intervention that can improve the ease of living for its citizens to push up economic growth,” he added.

Elaborating on the need to enhance productivity, Bery said promoting greater structural transformations and leveraging global integration will help boost productivity.

The Economic Survey 2024-25 estimates India needs to create eight million additional non-farm jobs on average every year till 2036 to absorb both the addition to the workforce (15-59 years) and the surplus labour coming out of the job shedding in agriculture.