NEW DELHI — To accelerate India’s goal of becoming a global industrial powerhouse, NITI Aayog has released a comprehensive report titled “Key Sectors to Position India as a Global Manufacturing Hub.”
The policy framework provides a data-driven roadmap to enhance competitiveness, deepen domestic value addition, and boost export capacity across critical industries. This initial report focuses on four high-potential verticals—Chemicals, Textiles, Telecom & Networking Equipment, and Solar Photovoltaics (PV)—with studies on eight additional manufacturing sectors to follow.
Four-Phase Methodology
The report’s recommendations stem from a structured four-stage evaluation:
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Relative Attractiveness: Shortlisting sectors with high market size and domestic/global growth potential.
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Comprehensive Assessment: Evaluating market scale, competitiveness, and strategic importance.
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International Benchmarking: Analyzing best practices from top-performing manufacturing nations.
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Actionable Roadmap: Formulating targeted interventions to address structural bottlenecks.
Sector-Wise Strategic Focus Areas
1. Chemicals Industry
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Landscape: Driven by petrochemicals, organic chemicals, specialty chemicals, and inorganic compounds.
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Strategic Priorities: Expanding downstream manufacturing, improving feedstock utilization, leveraging Foreign Trade Agreements (FTAs), and reducing raw material import dependence.
2. Textiles & Apparel
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Landscape: Contributes ~2% to national GDP, 11% to manufacturing GVA, and 9% of merchandise exports ($37.7 billion in FY25). Supports over 45 million jobs as the second-largest employer after agriculture.
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Strategic Priorities: Scaling up Man-Made Fibre (MMF) production, expanding technical textiles, improving raw material availability, and upgrading technological adoption across MSMEs.
3. Telecom & Networking Equipment
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Landscape: Underpinned by India’s 1.2+ billion subscriber base. Aligns with the National Telecom Policy 2025 (NTP-25) goals to double sector GDP contribution and product exports by 2030 while creating 1 million jobs.
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Strategic Priorities: Deepening component localization, establishing integrated industrial clusters, promoting joint ventures for technology transfer, and scaling domestic R&D.
4. Solar PV Manufacturing
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Landscape: Targeted to help bridge the gap between India’s 106 GW installed solar capacity (March 2025) and its 280 GW target by 2030. The domestic market ($3.7 billion) is projected to grow at 17–20% CAGR through 2030.
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Strategic Priorities: Strengthening upstream raw material capabilities (ingots, wafers, polysilicon), establishing clean-tech clusters, expanding performance-linked support, and securing export markets.
