A Review Paper on India’s Macroeconomic Focus on Export Versus Investment Led Growth Strategies – Issues and Implications

The Indian Economic Surveys 2018-19 and 2019-20 views the economy in either a virtuous or a vicious cycle of Savings, investment & export with investment and export as the key drivers of the cycles. The current paper focuses on the dilemma of choosing between the two alternatives, i.e., export led growth and investment led growth in light of the Indian Economic Surveys. A comparative study has been conducted to provide a guideline for choosing the optimal mix of growth models, its potential impact on variables of economic growth, choosing the appropriate sector for each model along with the rationale of framing monetary, fiscal and trade policies adopted at macroeconomic, sector and industry level that uses an admixture of the three-fold growth strategies. The current discourse concludes with a rationale of adopting a mixture of export led and investment led growth in the national growth model in the light of the facts and figures provided in the two Economic Surveys of 2018-19 and 2019-20.