NITI Aayog unveils a detailed roadmap targeting 12 priority sectors to elevate India’s position in global supply chains and achieve a $30 trillion economy by 2047, spotlighting opportunities in chemicals, textiles, and advanced manufacturing.
India’s ambition to become a global manufacturing hub by 2047 has been given a more detailed policy shape by NITI Aayog, which has identified 12 priority sectors for expansion, investment and export growth. The roadmap builds on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Independence Day pledge from the Red Fort and argues that India must move beyond simply raising output to strengthening its position in global supply chains and in higher-value production. According to the plan, the effort is tied both to the 2047 manufacturing target and to the wider goal of building a $30 trillion economy.
NITI Aayog’s analysis of 62 sectors concludes that manufacturing still accounts for about 17.5% of gross value added, while supporting roughly 185 million jobs in 2021-22. The sectors singled out include electronics, telecom equipment, solar PV, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, automobiles, defence and drones. Ashok Kumar Lahiri, a member of NITI Aayog, has said large-scale private investment will be essential if India is to capture the scale benefits needed to compete globally.
The chemical industry is presented as one of the clearest export opportunities. The report says domestic chemical consumption would need to grow by 10% to 11% a year over the next five financial years, with production rising by about 14% annually. It identifies potential export opportunities by 2030 of about $45 billion in speciality chemicals, $5 billion to $10 billion in inorganic chemicals and around $26 billion in petrochemicals.
Textiles remain a major employer and export earner, but the sector also illustrates the structural problems India must address. The report says textiles account for about 2% of GDP, 11% of manufacturing GVA and 9% of merchandise exports. In FY25, exports reached about $37.7 billion, while the industry employed more than 45 million people. India was the world’s sixth-largest textile exporter in 2024, with a 4.1% share of global exports, yet about 80% of manufacturing capacity is concentrated in MSME clusters, making the sector dependent on smaller firms and vulnerable supply chains.
Telecom equipment presents a different challenge: scale exists, but critical inputs remain heavily imported. The domestic telecom and network equipment market was about $25 billion in FY25 and is projected to double to roughly $50 billion by 2032, according to the report. However, exports between 2020 and 2024 remained limited at about $600 million to $1 billion a year, while imports stood at $4 billion to $5 billion. The report says dependence on China exceeds 80% for key components, making local production of parts as important as final assembly. Solar PV manufacturing shows a similar pattern, with India having increased module and cell production but still relying on imports of polysilicon and wafers.
The broader message is that India cannot reach its 2047 manufacturing target by volume alone. NITI Aayog says the country must climb higher in global value chains, produce more sophisticated goods, and reduce dependence on foreign raw materials and critical technologies. That will require deeper domestic component manufacturing, greater use of new technologies, productivity gains, export-oriented investment and stronger private sector participation. In October 2025, NITI Aayog’s Frontier Tech Hub separately outlined a longer-term manufacturing strategy that aims to place India among the world’s top three advanced manufacturing hubs by 2035, underscoring how central the sector has become to the government’s broader Viksit Bharat agenda.
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