Trillion-dollar digital economy possible in the next four years
10 March 2021: Recently, apex industry body ASSOCHAM released a research report along with The Dialogue, titled ‘Enabling a Trillion Dollar Digital Economy,’ in a virtual event. The event saw a host of eminent speakers including Dr. Amar Patnaik, Member of Parliament, Ms. Jyoti Arora, Special Secretary & Financial Adviser, Ministry of Electronics and IT, Ms. Anita Praveen, Additional Secretary, Department of Telecom and S. K. Gupta, Secretary, TRAI.
It may be noted that in February 2019, the Ministry of Electronics & IT, had released its Report on India’s “Trillion Dollar Digital Opportunity” which had stated that the country can create up to $1 trillion of economic value from the digital economy in 2025. India being the second-fastest digitizing economy amongst 17 leading economies of the world, its digital economy could generate productivity and output sufficient to support 55 million to 60 million workers in 2025.
One of the greatest things that India has managed to achieve during the challenging COVID-19 times is the increase in digital transactions which has helped sectors like healthcare and education immensely. Digital economy has the potential to bring 90 percent of the informal sector to the formal one. For us to achieve that we need to ensure that we have a strong digital infrastructure in place,” said Dr. Amar Patnaik.
In his address, S.K. Gupta stated that the telecom sector directly contributes around 6.5% to India’s GDP, however its indirect contribution would be in the range of 30 percent. He said that till the month of December 2020, there were around 1.15 billion mobile phone users in the country. Around 775 million users in India used internet facilities.
Ms. Jyoti Arora said that earlier for the verification of documents, there was a cost incurred to the tune of Rs.300-Rs.400, now through Aadhar enable e-verification, the costs have come down to just Rs 2-3 which is indeed remarkable. The UPI payments in the month of January 2021 have witnessed 2.3 billion transactions worth $4.3 trillion dollars.
