From a three-year view, India’s export story is very much alive: Rana Gupta

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Rana Gupta, MD, Manulife Investment Management, says what the Indian government did with Make in India, is in the case where the Indian government is the buyer, whether it is power, railways and all this equipment, they made a local content mandatory. That means the import substitution has to happen. You cannot just import and sell, that was the first phase, that has already happened and happening. The second phase is where we are moving on to now is basically technology absorption. In the second leg that we are going to see investing and deepening valuation within India. First, the import substitution gave the volume. Now that is giving these companies confidence to do value addition, leading to exports. I 2024, global growth is going to slow a bit. But if you take a three-year view, the export story is pretty much alive.”

I was just speaking with the head of JCB India head. He was just telling me that we are already the third largest construction equipment market in the world and will move to second largest in the next five-seven years. He also said we have a 20% growth visibility on exports. TRIL, KEI, Apar are saying that there is a major manufacturing capex happening in Europe and the US and India will be the country to feed into that. Are you also convinced on this argument?
We have been convinced on this argument for some time.

But before commenting on sector specific, let us take a step back and let us look at the design of it. So, what the Indian government did, in the case where the Indian government is the buyer, whether it is power, railways and all this equipment, is they made a local content mandatory. That means the import substitution has to happen.