Viksit Bharat 2047 envisions transforming India into a developed nation by its 100th year of independence in 2047. It encompasses multiple aspects of development, including economic growth, environmental sustainability, social progress, and good governance, aiming to make India a fully developed nation by 2047. Journey to become a developed nation by 2047 relies heavily on enhancing infrastructure & connectivity.
It is estimated that in 2047 size of Indian economy will be $ 34+ trillion. Service sector will keep dominating the largest pie in GDP but share of the manufacturing sector is projected to grow from 16% to 25% between FY23 and FY47. In this period contribution of exports to GDP is also expected to increase by 8% to 9% from current level 21%. In this transformational journey logistics and supply chain will play a pivotal role by enhancing efficiency, reducing costs, and facilitating trade and investment. Government of India has already initiated the measures to address these objective through policy initiatives like “PM GatiShakti’s National Master Plan” and “National Logistics Policy”. The PM Gatishakti National Master Plan focuses on major transport sectors to enhance multimodal connectivity infrastructure across various economic zones. The plan provides a comprehensive database of ongoing and future projects from various ministries and departments of both the Central Government and States/UTs related to infrastructure. While National Logistics Policy focuses on developing integrated infrastructure and enhancing service efficiency, including processes and regulatory frameworks, through its Comprehensive Logistics Action Plan.
Vision 2047 for the logistics sector revolves around 3 axis of Infrastructure, Technology and Regulation. Under GatiShakti, Government has planned to invest INR 100 Lakh Crore in infrastructure in order to make world class infrastructure. It comprises multiple initiatives in road logistics, rail logistics, maritime, aviation and multimodal. These infra initiatives will improve throughput efficiency and reduce the cost of logistics. These infrastructures will also enable India to realign its modal mix of transportation, which is more tilted toward road resulting higher cost. These massive infra plan also imbibes private sectors participation by way of allowing PPP structure or tax exemption or 100% FDI.
Connected ecosystem and end to end visibility are integral to drive efficiency and new logistics policy is completely aligned to this philosophy. The National Logistics Policy aims to encompass all trade processes within the logistics sector across all modes of transportation. Initial initiative for improving efficiency included e-waybill, e-sancit, e-storage etc. As a next step ULIP has been developed to provide single window visibility of real-time information to all stakeholders in the logistics value chain. NLP initiatives also includes e-logs, a portal for bound resolution of issues by DPIIT.
To achieve logistics goal of Viksit Bharat 2047, still a long way to go. One of the major challenges will be skill gap specially for handling advanced logistics operations. The sector employs more than 22 Mn people, still not considered very attractive for young talent. Going forward sector will need more and more skilled resources in contrast with past. Fragmented nature of transportation is second major challenge. Any unorganised of fragmented industry brings its own inherited inefficiency. Scenario is changing but pace of change is very slow. Some of the segments of logistics infra require high capex and return of these investment remains low in initial years leading to financing complexity or low interest of investors.
Many of these challenges has already been taken up by policy makers to remove possible challenges of efficient logistics.