Will a services exports-driven economic growth strategy work for India?

While Covid hit services exports harder than manufacturing, the share of the former in global services exports seems to support the call experts have made in favour of the sector

India's services exports have lagged the outbound shipment of manufactured items, though the gap between the two was narrowing immediately before Covid-19 struck. However, the pandemic hit services exports harder than it did those of the manufacturing sector.

In 2014-15, services exports stood at $158.10 billion, constituting 62.46 per cent of India's manufacturing exports. In 2019-20, That number went up to 78.4 per cent, but came down to 77.74 per cent in Covid-hit 2020-21 and further to 71.05 per cent in the first ten months of the current financial year (See table).

Experts' take

In such a scenario, why