Hyderabad: Indian agriculture sector, which contributes about 16 per cent to the nation's GDP is grossly “underemployed”, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Sunday said.
Speaking at the inaugural ceremony of Symbiosis International University campus at Kothur in Mahaboobnagar District, Jaitely said population in some of the developed countries is contracting and the trend may present opportunities to the Indian youth if they are trained well.
“Agriculture in India barely gives to agriculturists subsistence. In fact, people are already underemployed there.
We can't afford to have 55 per cent of people in agriculture contributing 16 per cent to the national GDP. That creates inequalities.
In terms of manufacturing, our aspiration is that it should be about 25 per cent of our economy. And therefore we lost the opportunity when the first industrial revolution came, we lost the opportunity when the second and third industrial revolution came... that is low-cost manufacturing,” he said.
According to the finance minister, China and other Asian economies benefited more than India. “Now it seems that fourth industrial revolution is there for India to catch up...
hopefully we may... but we are not sure.” “The hard reality is that we are a services economy and services do contribute about 60 per cent of our national GDP,” he further said.
