Commerce, Industry and Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu on Friday said the Centre is working up from the grassroots to take India’s growth levels to double digits.

“Change has to happen at the macro as well as the micro levels. We are taking steps to ensure growth levels in every district in the country go up by 3 to 4 per cent. When this accumulates at the macro level, India’s GDP growth will move from 7 per cent to 10 per cent,” Prabhu said, while addressing the BusinessLine Changemaker Awards 2019.

“If a district is growing at 5-6 per cent now, how can we push it higher by 3-4 per cent? If all districts in India grow at a faster pace, India’s growth will. Also accelerate. It is far more easy to make it happen at the grassroots level,” he added.

The Minister said that the recently announced new industrial policy is aimed at ensuring that the industrial sector’s contribution to GDP increases from 16 per cent to 20 per cent.

“India’s industrial sector has the potential to reach 20 per cent of GDP. We have made a plan to identify the sectors that can take us to 20 per cent,” he said.

Prabhu said that 12 services sectors had also been similarly identified, which, he said, could be scaled up in the future.

The third area of focus is the agriculture sector, Prabhu noted. The Centre, he said, is targeting exports of $100 billion from agro products, against $32 billion now.

“We have identified the products and the places from where they can be exported. We have created a cluster from where these products will be exported,” Prabhu said, adding that exports would also lead to overall modernisation of India’s agri sector as the quality would have to be benchmarked to global standards.

“We need to have micro and macro level strategies for India to grow at a faster rate,” he said.

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