India’s ‘space economy’ valued at ₹36,794 crore

What is the News?

The Centre for Development Studies(CDS) and the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) has released a paper titled “The space economy of India: its size and structure”.

About the paper on the Space Economy of India

Purpose: The paper is a first-of-its-kind attempt at measuring the size of India’s space economy.

This paper relied on the data from the Indian Space Research Organisation(ISRO), Parliament documents, Comptroller and Auditor-General’s(CAG) reports, data on intellectual property rights and other government data.

Key highlights from the paper related to the Space Economy of India

Size of India’s Space Economy: It is estimated at ₹36,794 crores (approximately $5 billion) for the financial year 2020-21. 

Estimated space size as a percentage of the GDP: This has slipped from 0.26% in 2011-12 to 0.19% in 2020-21.

Space Sectors: Among the space constituents, space applications accounted for the major chunk of the annual budget in 2020-21, followed by space operations and manufacturing.

Space budget as a percentage of the GDP: It has slipped from 0.09% in 2000-01 to 0.05% in 2011-12 and has remained more or less at that level since then.

India’s Space Spending compared to other countries: In relation to GDP, India’s space spending is more than that of China, Germany, Italy and Japan but less than that of the U.S. and Russia.

What is the significance of this paper?

This paper has been released at a time when the Central government policies are opening up the sector to private players. These policies are very likely to enlarge the size of the sector through enhanced private investment and improved integration with the global private space industry.

Source: This post is based on an article “India’s ‘space economy’ valued at ₹36,794 crore” published in The Hindu on 27th March 2022.