Some interesting economic facts about India

Democracy is India’s destiny. A country of diversity and complexity • 17 major languages, 22000 dialects and all the world’s major religions • cannot be governed any other way.

  Villages have a greater voice in their affairs. Village councils must reserve 33% of their seats for women. As a result, there are over 1 million elected women in villages across the country.

  India is the most pro-American country in the world, other than the US itself. The Pew Global Attitude Survey, in 2005, found 71% of Indians having a favorable impression of the US. Only Americans had a more favorable view of America (83%).

  India has a real and deep private sector, a clean well-regulated financial system and a sturdy rule of law.

  BMW (23 million USD), Cisco (1.1 billion USD), Nokia (150 million USD) are some of the investors in India.

  Indian companies benchmark to global standards and are better managed than Chinese firms.

  A study by MIT’s Yasheng Huang points out that India’s companies use their capital far more efficiently than their counterparts in China.

  Over the last 4 years, Japan’s Deming prizes for managerial innovation have been awarded more often to Indian companies than to firms from any other country, including Japan.

  Over 54% of Indians are less than 25 years old making India one of the youngest countries in the world.

  Indian middle class is 300 million strong.

  Personal consumption makes up 67% of GDP in India, much higher than China (42%) or any other Asian country.

  India offers a 14 billion USD luxury goods market.

  Against just 3 shopping malls in 2001, India had 100 in 2005 and will have 345 by 2007.

  Over 2 million student graduate from India's universities every year out of which 350,000 are engineers.

  India's GDP is expected to grow at around 8% this fiscal.

  Over the last 15 years, India has been the second fastest growing country in the world after China, averaging above 6% growth per year.

  Goldman Sachs study in 2003 predicted that over the next 50 years, India will be the fastest growing among the world’s major economies.

  By 2040, India will be the world’s third largest economy. By 2050, it will be five times that of Japan and its per capita income will have risen to 35 times its level in 2003.

  India is inching towards becoming the largest producer of two-wheelers in the world.

  Automobile parts business (made up by 100’s of small companies) was a 4 billion USD industry five years ago. It will be up at 10 billion USD this year. General Motors alone will import 1 billion USD of auto components from India.

  India's Mobile phone population has grown by 45% in 2005 over 2004.

  80 million Indians mobile phones as of March 2006.

  India is set to become one of the largest markets in the world for mobile handsets.

  Investments on roads from 2001 to 2006 will be 10 times that of the investment made from 1947 to 2000.

  India is the world's 2nd largest producer of fruits and vegetables.

  India is among the top 5 producers in the world for foodgrains, pulses, poultry and first of milk

  Arrival of international tourists in India has gone up 60% in 2005 over 2002.

  India's IT and ITES industry exports grew 34.5% in 2004-05 to touch 17.8 billion USD and continue to grow at around 40% per year.

  Gartner estimates that India Will generate 13.8 billion USD from offshore BPO exports in 2007.