KPMG: India Must Shift from Scale to Productivity for Viksit Bharat 2047

In its report titled "Top 10 Priorities for India's Next Growth Phase", professional services firm KPMG outlined a coordinated execution agenda focused on manufacturing depth, human capital, MSME competitiveness, infrastructure efficiency, and institutional delivery.

In practical economic terms, KPMG said Viksit Bharat implies a transition from scale to productivity.

"It means moving from assembly to manufacturing depth; from infrastructure creation to logistics efficiency; from access to services to quality outcomes; from enterprise formalisation to competitiveness; and from enrolment in education to employability. It also implies stronger external resilience built on manufacturing exports and domestic value addition, rather than reliance on services alone. This distinction is central," the KPMG report read.

The report stresses that India has largely completed its "foundation phase" -- marked by macroeconomic stability, expanding public infrastructure, digital public platforms, and targeted industrial policy -- and must now convert capital investment into sustained productivity gains.

Among the top priorities is building a future-ready workforce, linking education, skilling, and employment more closely.

With India's median age at 28 and a projected working-age population exceeding 1.13 billion by 2050, the report calls for operationalising the National Education Policy (NEP), expanding apprenticeship-linked degrees, and scaling re-skilling in AI-enabled services, advanced manufacturing, and digital technologies.

Manufacturing expansion is positioned at the core of India's 2047 ambitions. Despite recent gains in electronics and engineering exports, manufacturing remains about 17 per cent of GDP.

KPMG recommends deepening production ecosystems beyond final assembly, boosting Industry 4.0 adoption among MSMEs, and integrating clusters with global value chains to improve domestic value addition. Strengthening MSMEs, which employ over 110 million people, is another critical lever.

The report advocates scaling cash-flow-based lending using GST and digital data, cluster-based productivity upgrading, and building integrated export enablement pathways to help small firms graduate into competitive mid-sized enterprises.

Infrastructure is entering what KPMG calls "Phase II" -- shifting from asset creation to asset utilisation. Priorities include multimodal logistics corridors, plug-and-play industrial cities, digital logistics stacks, and reliable energy-water-digital backbones to support sunrise sectors such as semiconductors, green hydrogen, defence manufacturing, and AI-driven digital infrastructure.

Urban transformation, trade diversification, regulatory simplification, and strengthened municipal finance are also central to sustaining growth. The report underscores that cities must function as productive economic regions, supported by transit-led planning and stronger own-source revenues.

Finally, KPMG stresses fiscal discipline and outcome-based budgeting, crowding in private capital through blended finance and asset monetisation, while embedding social protection, care infrastructure, and inclusion into growth strategy.

"Viksit Bharat @2047 is ultimately a statement of intent about the kind of nation India seeks to become - prosperous, resilient, inclusive, and globally influential. It is not a static endpoint, but a sustained process of building, delivering, and refining over time. India has made early progress in translating intent into implementation across infrastructure, digital systems, manufacturing, and state-led delivery. The task now is to accelerate this shift and sustain momentum through consistent execution, supported by digital platforms that strengthen last-mile delivery and transparency," the report read.

"The next phase will be defined by how effectively priorities are carried through on the ground. This means keeping projects moving from approval to completion, ensuring innovation reaches production through stronger R&D linkages, and building feedback loops that allow mid-course correction rather than delayed fixes."

- ANI