India sets $100 billion by 2040 and is growing at 2.44%

§1A target, with projections attached.

India's Commerce Ministry convened a Chintan Shivir on 19 August and published a roadmap taking the country's gems and jewellery exports from about $28 billion in 2025-26 to $100 billion by 2040. Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal set the target out with projections attached: 1.2% of India's GDP and 14% of its merchandise exports by that year, manufacturing output roughly doubled to about 15 lakh crore rupees and overall economic value near 60 lakh crore. The work is organised into five missions: global market access, MSME scale-up, an export-import fast track, Crafted by India, and next-generation talent and design.

§2What the number actually asks for.

The arithmetic is the part nobody printed alongside it. Going from $28 billion to $100 billion means multiplying the sector by 3.57 times. Read to the fiscal year ending March 2040 that is fourteen years and needs 9.5% compound annual growth in US dollars; read to the year after, fifteen years and 8.9%. Either way the roadmap asks the sector to grow between 3.6 and 3.9 times faster than it is growing now, every year, for a decade and a half, and to do it in dollars.

The Council's own most recent export data, published on 13 August and covering April to July 2026, puts gross gems and jewellery exports at $9.17 billion, up 2.44% in dollars. The currency matters here more than usual, because the same four months are up 13.58% in rupees. The target is denominated in the currency that grew 2.44%. In July alone gross exports were $2.35 billion against $2.34 billion a year earlier, a rise of 0.38% in dollars and 11.68% in rupees.

Inside that total the mix is moving the way the roadmap says it should, which is the strongest evidence in its favour. Studded gold jewellery rose 21.09% to $2.24 billion, silver jewellery 72.19% to $508.18 million, platinum jewellery 17.20% to $77.82 million and polished lab-grown diamonds 7.47% to $408.50 million. Plain gold jewellery, the least value-added line in the table, fell 8.46% to $1.80 billion. Cut and polished diamonds, still the sector's largest single line at $3.60 billion, fell 8.00%.

That last pair is the problem the target has to solve rather than evidence that it will be solved. Cut and polished diamonds are 39.3% of the four-month total by this desk's arithmetic, and they are shrinking. The three fastest-growing lines are small: silver, platinum and lab-grown jewellery together came to $994.50 million across four months, under 11% of the whole. Trebling a sector whose largest line is contracting means the growth arrives either from lines an order of magnitude smaller or from a recovery in the largest line that nobody at the Shivir put a date on. Agrawal named the mechanism as “building a comprehensive ecosystem driven by innovation, global design leadership and trust”, and called for a move away from low-margin contract manufacturing towards design-led and branded goods.