India to become third largest economy in five years: minister Piyush Goyal

Pune: Union minister Piyush Goyal on Saturday claimed that India will become the third-largest economy in the world in the next five years. He added that by 2047, the country could be at the level of the US. "The 1.4 billion people of India are going to make our economy a USD 30-40 trillion one."

Speaking at the Asia Economic Dialogue 2023 event in Pune, he said the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership trade deal was a "disaster in the making" and it "was music to my ears" when Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India would not be joining it. He also called it "entering a free trade agreement without a court of appeal, no democracy or rule of law."

"Except for a handful of people, I don't remember anyone saying we should join RCEP. India was the outlier in the RCEP mechanism as, of the 15 nations in it, India had free trade agreements with 10 ASEAN nations as well as Japan and Korea, and also due to geopolitical tensions with China," he added.

The RECP included 1010 ASEAN nations and six of its free trade agreement partners, namely India, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. Speaking at the RCEP Summit in Thailand in 2019, PM Modi said the negotiations failed to address India's issues and concerns and the country opted out.

One of the fears India had was the market being flooded with cheap Chinese agricultural and industrial products. "The mechanism envisaged at the time would have severely impacted manufacturing in India. My own experience is that China blocks the door for imports from India, while we here have become weaker and started enjoying low-cost, low-quality goods (from there). It's somewhere like opium," said Goyal.

"Between 2004-2014, our trade deficit with China rose from USD 500 million to USD 48 billion. We allowed everything to come in from China while they stopped products from India. Therefore, it was music to my ears when PM Modi said we would not join the RCEP trade deal," he added.