Economic Survey sees big gains from higher energy consumption

New Delhi: The Economic Survey 2018-19 presented on Thursday said that a two-and-a-half times increase in India’s per capita energy consumption will help it grow the real per capita gross domestic product (GDP) by $5000 (in 2010 prices). Also, if India has to achieve the Human Development Index (HDI) level of 0.8, the per capita energy consumption has to quadruple.

This comes against the backdrop of India using only around 6% of the world’s primary energy despite it having 18% of the world’s population even as the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious task of becoming a $5 trillion economy by 2025. The Survey said that the ‘problem of energy poverty has been more pervasive than income poverty”.