India has 3-year window to tap China +1 advantage

In the next 15 to 20 years time span, India has an opportunity in manufacturing. But the opportunity and the window for India is at best two to three years, because supply chains are unwinding, they’re becoming shorter, and they’re looking for new geographies

New Delhi: India has a two-to-three-year window to capitalise on the global strategy of de-risking from China and the government needs to be very alert to come up with a set of policies that make the shift of businesses to India attractive and easier, NITI Aayog CEO Subrahmanyam said on Friday.

Addressing CII Global Economic Policy Forum 2023, Subrahmanyam further said India is in a sweet spot due to the outcome of geopolitics and the fact that the country has a young working-age population. “So I think, in the next 15 to 20 years time span, India has an opportunity in manufacturing. But the opportunity and the window for India is at best two to three years, because supply chains are unwinding, they’re becoming shorter, and they’re looking for new geographies.

“This is going to be a two-three year phenomenon, and then supply chains will get frozen,” he said. Subrahmanyam pointed out that it is not just non-Chinese companies but even Chinese companies which want to move out of China because of labour shortages. “They are having a shortage of demand because there is a population shift in terms of the age, a shortage of labour supply, the rising cost of labour and the stressed capital markets,” he said.