Use AI to leapfrog the economy
Indian businesses have been urged to leverage on state of the art technologies and emerging fields such as artificial intelligence to reimagine production and leapfrog the economy.
Making the call, Amitabh Kant, CEO of National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog), said “we need to focus on design and innovation”, to become a major manufacturing hub.
India in recent year has channelled public funds to spur innovation, Kant said in his address to the annual International Conference on South Asia, held in Singapore 6 April 2018.
He cited market estimates that artificial intelligence has the potential to add over US$900 billion to the Indian economy by 2035.
Elaborating, he said the technology is being used to increase eficiency and enhance governance across the government.
The government has also been poviding a huge impetus to entrepreneurship.
As of last month, 437 schemes across 57 ministeries are covered under the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) program, according to Kant.
“The government has approximately saved about US$12.7 billion. Similarly, under the JAM Trinity (Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and Mobile Technology), the government had made tremendous progress in enhancing financial inclusion,” said Kant.
India has also done well by relaxing 87 rules on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) across 21 sectors, he told some 240 delegates at the conference.
“Over 1,200 redundant laws have been scrapped. These efforts have been showing phenomenal results. FDI is at an all-time high. Between 2014 and 2017, India received US$160 billn of FDI.”
The government, he said, has also been providing a huge impetus to entrepreneurship.
Since the launch of ‘Startup India’ in 2016, more than 8,200 startups have been recognized by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion.
“The release of innovation and startup policies of various states and Union Territories remove the informational barriers and policy uncertainty around the innovation ecosystem,” he said.
He higlighted the Micro Units Development & Refinancing Agency (MUDRA), which provides loans to small and micro enterprises. “Nearly 79% of MUDRA’s loan beneficiaries are women entrepreneurs.”
Touching on Gender Parity, he said the government has removed key impediments to women’s labour force participation by easing access to credit under MUDRA.
The conference, ‘Emerging South Asia: Politics, Economy and International Relations’, was organized by the Institute of South Asian Studies, a think tank of National University of Singapore. fii-news.com
