The Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) hosted a seminar titled “Why is India Struggling With Manufacturing Competitiveness?” on Friday, April 4, 2025. 

The seminar featured a presentation by Prerna Prabhakar, Associate Fellow, CSEP. This was followed by a conversation with Anil Bhardwaj, Secretary General, Federation of Indian Micro and Small & Medium Enterprises (FISME); RP Goyal, Advisor-Trade, Shahi Exports Pvt. Ltd.; and TG Srinivasan, Visiting Senior Fellow, CSEP. The session was chaired and moderated by Sanjay Kathuria, Visiting Senior Fellow, CSEP.

About the event  

Global trade is facing uncertain times due to multiple downside risks, including the protectionist policy stance of the United States since Donald Trump took office and the prolonged Russia-Ukraine war. India must find ways to compete and thrive in this challenging environment, leveraging trade as a key driver of economic growth and job creation. A critical priority for India is scaling up the export of manufactured goods, which is essential for generating more and better jobs for its youth. However, India’s share in global manufacturing exports remains low at just 1.8% (as of 2023), trailing even behind Vietnam. This seminar discussed key findings from a forthcoming CSEP working paper by Prerna Prabhakar, Sanjay Kathuria and TG Srinivasan, that examines the key challenges hindering India’s manufacturing competitiveness and outlines policy priorities to address these barriers. The paper assesses India’s performance relative to key Asian economies- Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam- by constructing a Competitiveness Index across a range of components, grouped within six pillars. The insights derived from this comparative analysis were further enriched through in-depth qualitative discussions with industry stakeholders, providing a unique combination of a macro-level perspective and on-the-ground insights, both quantitative and qualitative. The authors find that India trails key Asian competitors in enablers of competitiveness and suggest corrective policies.

Chair & Moderator

Sanjay Kathuria 

Sanjay Kathuria is a Visiting Senior Fellow in the Growth, Finance and Development vertical at CSEP. He has vast experience of more than 40 years and is recognised as a pre-eminent thinker and commentator on economic development, growth and integration in South Asia. His research interests and writings have focused on South Asia, economic growth and development, industrial policy and competitiveness, trade and globalisation, regional integration, the economics of small states, and gender issues, among others.

He is also co-founder of the Trade Sentinel, and Visiting Faculty, Ashoka University. He is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore and a Global Fellow at the Wilson Centre in Washington, DC.

Earlier, Sanjay Kathuria was Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. He was a Lead Economist at the World Bank in Washington, DC, where he spent 27 years working on South Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe, including field assignments in New Delhi and Dhaka. Before joining the World Bank, he was a Fellow at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations in New Delhi, from 1982 to 1992.

He holds a PhD in Economics from Oxford University as an Inlaks Scholar. He graduated from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, and completed his Master’s at the Delhi School of Economics.

Apart from many books and reports published at the World Bank, his writings have featured in Foreign Policy, Hindustan Times, The Indian Express, The Wire, Daily FT (Sri Lanka), Business Standard, among others.

He is currently working on a new book on The Future of South Asia.

Presenter

Prerna Prabhakar

Prerna Prabhakar is an Associate Fellow at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP). Prerna’s research primarily focuses on trade and industrial policies, and competitiveness. Prior to joining CSEP, she worked with the Council on Energy Environment and Water (CEEW) where she focused on understanding the linkages between sustainability and international trade.  Prerna has also worked with the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) on external sector issues, investment potential for Indian States/Union Territories as well as land policy matters. She has also worked on research projects with the University of Delhi, South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics (SANDEE), Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS) and Centre for WTO Studies at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT).

She has completed her PhD from the Department of Business Economics, University of Delhi. She has a postgraduate degree in Economics from TERI School of Advanced Studies (TSAS). She has published her research in Indian and international journals including Environmental Economics and Policy Studies. She has contributed articles to leading publications including Business Standard, Indian Express, Hindustan Times, Financial Express, and several others. 

Discussants

Anil Bhardwaj 

Anil Bhardwaj is Secretary General of Federation of Indian Micro and Small & Medium Enterprises (FISME), New Delhi. He is a Private Sector Development and Trade Professional.

He holds a Masters in International Trade. His specialisations include industrial and trade policy issues and framework conditions of promotional and regulatory environment for SMEs and Market Access issues of MSMEs Multilateral Trade Negotiations (such as WTO) and at Regional Trade Agreements. He has advised and worked on several SME development projects supported by Govt. of India, ILO, UNCTAD, UNIDO, UNDP, UNESCAP, ITC & UNCTAD (Geneva), UNDP, ADB, Asian Productivity Council (Tokyo), EU, DFID and GIZ among others. He has authored books and guides for SMEs. He writes regularly on Indian MSME issues. He is a Governing Board member of Entrepreneurship Development Institute (EDI), Ahmedabad.

RP Goyal

RP Goyal is a retired Civil Servant of the 1987 batch of “Indian Trade Service.” Academically, he is a qualified Chartered Accountant and Company Secretary. He has also undergone a 9-month Foundation Course in Foreign Trade from IIFT, New Delhi. After serving for about 33 years in different capacities with Govt. of India, he retired in 2021 as Additional Director General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), Department of Commerce.

He has experience working in different aspects of International Trade, including foreign trade policy, foreign trade agreements, Trade Remedies, special economic zones (SEZs), and export promotion strategies. In addition, he has experience working in heavy machinery, heavy electricals, and the machine tool sector. He also has diverse administrative experience, having headed SEZs/Regional Offices of DGFT and two Government of India companies as CMD. He also acted as the chief vigilance officer of BHEL and the government director of many GOI companies.

Presently, he is an Advisor (Trade) to the Shahi group, India’s largest exporter of Apparel and Garments. He is also a Guest Faculty member on foreign trade policy at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade for the new probationers of the Indian Trade Service.

TG Srinivasan 

TG Srinivasan is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress in New Delhi who has a career centred around trade, macroeconomics, and poverty reduction. Currently, his work is primarily oriented towards trade policy and economic relations within the South Asian region. He is a co-founder of the Trade Sentinel project, an innovative initiative aimed at developing early warning mechanisms for monitoring and analysing trade policy dynamics in South Asian countries.

Before joining the Centre, he has made significant contributions to the World Bank as a Senior Economist. During his tenure at the World Bank, he led poverty assessment work for countries like Jordan, Yemen, Nepal, and Bhutan. He also served as the country economist and played a crucial role in coordinating the World Bank’s global macroeconometric forecasting models. He worked in the Ministry of Finance in Oman, where he was involved in the development and implementation of the medium-term economic framework.

All content reflects the individual views of the speakers. The Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) does not hold an institutional view on any subject.

In the media:

More R&D, easier labour laws needed to counter Trump’s tariffs, say experts – Business Standard

Please contact Gurmeet Kaur at GKaur@csep.org for general queries and Ayesha Manocha at AManocha@csep.org for media queries.