NITI Aayog CEO Subrahmanyam Confident That India Will Fare Better Amidst Tariff Uncertainties

Urging states to capitalise on the opportunity presented by the tariffs, Subrahmanyam said India fared better than its counterparts.

He added that India’s skilled and cheap labour also worked to the country’s advantage.

Source : PTI

NITI Aayog CEO B V R Subrahmanyam on Saturday expressed that India was placed well to manage any impact of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Addressing the media post the 10th Governing Council meeting of the NITI Aayog, the official said that the exact topic of Trump tariffs wasn’t discussed in the meeting. However, he added that the overall geopolitical environment remained favourable for India.

Urging states to capitalise on the opportunity presented by the tariffs, Subrahmanyam said India fared better than its counterparts. “If you look at the overall geopolitical and geoeconomics environment, it is favourable to India for a variety of reasons,” he said, as reported by IANS. 

Explaining his rationale behind his optimism for the Indian economy, he said ‘you are not hit as badly as others’. He added that India’s skilled and cheap labour also worked to the country’s advantage. “You are being driven by a youthful workforce. Anybody wanting to do manufacturing on a significant scale, the only place you can get cheap labour force on a large scale is now India. So this is inevitable. What is the problem? The problem is all on the supply side. You need workforce which is skilled, you need to set out your infrastructural issues, you need to have good utilities, electricity, water supply, roads, industrial parks, logistics, etc. If we do that, it is there,” he noted.

He further pointed out that states which have been able to focus on these pointers are able to capitalise on the opportunities and urged others to follow the lead and work on their development along these lines.

Notably, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also urged the chief ministers of various states to come together and work in collaboration with each other. Speaking as the chair at the meeting in New Delhi, the PM stressed on accelerating the development pace in the country. "We have to increase the speed of development. If the Centre and all the States come together and work together like Team India, no goal is impossible," the PM said.