Digital economy to generate US$1 trillion
India has the potential to become data refinery center for the world, said Minister for Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad at the ‘Invest Digicom 2019 – Propelling Digital Communications in India: Role of FDI’.
“I want India to become the big centre of data refinery. Refining raw data, cleaning it and saving it in safe and secure conditions for further processing,” he said, adding India is a growing digital economy with leading presence on digital platforms.
The world needs to appreciate India’s changing narrative from digital communication and software production to open source and electronic manufacturing, he pointed out at the conference on 24 Sept 2019.
“While data privacy debate is going on globally, India should work towards having a blend of data availability, data utility, data innovation and data privacy. If India is to offer all this, obviously you need FDI and getting high FDI would depend on how you present India’s case to global audience,” he said.
He further said that while Indian government is committed to achieve US$5 trillion economy, US$1 trillion will come from India’s digital economy alone.
“India has everything going for it – good human resource, open society, democratic government, a very powerful global leader and a huge market. All of this with friendly policy initiatives has made India an attractive investment destination. From being the ninth biggest recipient of FDI, India can become the world’s top recipient,” said the Minister.
The conference was organized jointly by FICCI and National Institute of Communication Finance of the Ministry of Communications.
“We are going to launch a National Broadband Mission. The mission will focus on increasing fibre density across the country, more towers and more telecom infrastructure. All these are areas where we can attract a lot of investment,” disclosed Anshu Prakash, Chairman, Digital Communications Commission (DCC) and Secretary, Department of Telecommunications.
Creation of digital infrastructure requires huge investment, and as such infrastructure, investment, innovation and inclusion are important for developing the digital economy, elaborated Dilip Padhye, Advisor (Finance), Department of Telecommunications. fiinews.com
