India should aspire to become high-income country by 2047: NITI

New Delhi: India should aspire to become a high-income country by 2047 and this would need sustained economic growth year after year, NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said on Wednesday. Kant further said that India will grow if the country can use power of its private sector. "Our per capita income is approximately $2,000. India is a lower middle income country. Our aspiration should be to become a high-income country by 2047 and this would need sustained growth year after year," he said at an event here.

Kant pointed out that in 1947, per capita income of South Korea, China and India were more or less equal.

"Seventy-five years later South Korea's per capita income is 7 times of India," he added. Noting that China and South Korea recorded a 10 per cent growth year after year, Kant said, "If India won't grow at higher rate then it will be caught in low income growth scenario." The NITI Aayog CEO lamented that bureaucrats have made it difficult for businesses to grow. "We have built rules and regulations which have killed entrepreneurship," he said, adding that bureaucrats should learn the art of restructuring public-private partnership projects, de-risk projects and ensure more participation from private sector. Kant said the government has already said that public sector units will exist only in four key sectors, but his personal feelings is that a few of them will be there in strategic areas like atomic energy and space. "There should (be) no public sector (companies) at all by 2047," he opined.