India wants to boost R&D spending to 2 laptop of GDP by 2035 to spice up manufacturing: Report
The manufacturing exercise’s share within the GDP has declined to 13 per cent in 2024 in comparison with 16 per cent in 2015, Careedge Rankings stated, including that this illustrates “structural challenges” in scaling value-added manufacturing.
Nations like Bangladesh and Vietnam have been capable of increase the manufacturing share of GDP in the identical interval.
The manufacturing exercise has grown at 5 per cent per yr throughout the identical interval, however rising the share of producing within the GDP just isn’t enough, it stated, including that low R&D spending of 0.6-0.7 per cent of GDP is among the many components hampering the expansion within the high-employment sector.
“India ought to goal to extend its R&D spend to 2 per cent by 2035 in keeping with its Asian friends, to boost the share of producing in GDP, which would require larger private-sector participation, stronger innovation ecosystems and improved research-to-commercialisation pipelines,” it stated.
Efforts want to incorporate strengthening the STEM (science, know-how, engineering, arithmetic) schooling, deeper industry-academia collaboration, increased private-sector R&D funding, and built-in innovation-led industrial ecosystems to construct long-term world competitiveness, the ranking company stated.
Its senior director Ranjan Sharma acknowledged that current coverage initiatives have strengthened manufacturing capabilities, however added that the long-term competitiveness will depend upon the power to transition to innovation-driven manufacturing that results in larger worth addition.With R&D spending at simply 0.6-0.7 per cent of GDP, India stays considerably behind world friends, Sharma stated.
The US spends over 3 per cent of GDP on R&D, China 2.5 per cent, and South Korea’s as much as 5 per cent, the report stated.
India’s share in patents stands solely at 4 per cent globally, which is low due to low researcher density and weak industry-academia collaboration, it added.
R&D spending amongst listed Indian firms is concentrated in a number of sectors like vehicles, prescribed drugs, chemical compounds, and metals, whereas the broader industrial base stays under-invested, the ranking company stated.
The innovation, which emerges from the spending, tends to be incremental somewhat than path-breaking, which forces Indian companies to be followers of world developments as a substitute of main them and deprives the nation’s companies of the first-mover benefit.
Structural constraints on R&D, together with low private-sector participation in R&D, danger aversion, expertise outflow, and scale-first progress methods, have hindered the transition in the direction of innovation-led manufacturing, the report stated.
Elaborating on schooling, the report stated the per capita expenditure on the sector stays “alarmingly low” at round Rs 6,000, leading to restricted studying outcomes and ability improvement, notably in technical and vocational coaching.
Different features, which will help innovation, can be increasing tax incentives for R&D, bettering entry to danger capital, introducing performance-linked funding fashions, and inspiring giant enterprise teams to put money into innovation and subsequently commercialise the identical, Careeedge stated.

