The country needs to boost its manufacturing sector to bridge the ballooning current account deficit (CAD) and trade imbalance, a top government official said on Thursday.
"There is lot of talk about CAD and trade deficit. If you have to address the concerns of CAD and trade deficit, there is no option but to go for manufacturing," Secretary in the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), Saurabh Chandra, said here at a Ficci function.
He said that there are countries which have trade surpluses equal to India's trade deficit.
"The top five countries which have trade surpluses, three are manufacturing power houses - Germany, China and Japan. The remaining two are oil rich nations," he said.
India's trade deficit have touched an all-time high of $ 191 billion during the last fiscal.
India's CAD deficit touched a record high of 6.7 per cent of GDP in the October-December quarter. CAD occurs when a country’s total imports of goods, services and transfers is greater than the country’s total export of goods, services and transfers.
Chandra said that to increase the contribution of manufacturing sector in the country's GDP and create lakhs of jobs, manufacturing should be high quality.