Ravi Shankar Prasad Meets the Industry Leaders to Develop a road map for US$1 Trillion Digital Economy
Digital India being one of the most important programmes of the Government of India, the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) today organized a high-level consultation with the industry leaders from IT and ITeS sector with focus on digital financial services and e-commerce. The consultation was conducted for developing the road map for One Trillion Dollar Digital Economy in India.
The meeting was chaired by Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister for Electronics & Information Technology and Law & Justice, in the presence of P. Chaudhary, Minister of State, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology and Law & Justice, Aruna Sundararajan, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology and Dr. Ajay Kumar, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology.
The industry was represented by leading corporate houses and industry associations like Infosys, IBM, Wipro, Google, Microsoft, Mahindra Tech, Intel Corporation, Panasonic India, NIIT, Quickheal, Practo, Hike, Lava International Ltd, Cyient Ltd, IVCA, NPCI, NASSCOM, IAMAI et al.
The industry leaders welcome the present initiative of the government and asserted that an effective partnership between government and the private sector is the key for creating One Trillion $ Digital Economy in India. Better dispute resolution mechanisms for PPP projects, promoting emerging technologies like cloud, big data, GIS, AI etc through industry collaboration, strengthening the legal framework for data security were some of the key areas where government need to take reform measures for implementing the roadmap.
Ravi Shankar Prasad also announced that the Government will come out with new electronic and software product policy and a framework for data security and protection policy. Additionally, a GST Cell would be set up in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. He further said that there is no threat of job losses in the IT Sector. The Government as well as the industry remain upbeat about the IT Sector, as over 6 lakhs of IT jobs were created in last 3 years.
The Government of India has already partnered with the industry in designing and developing certain services and platforms like MyGov, Digital Locker, e-Sign, Cloud Services, Government e-Marketplace, e-National Agricultural Market etc.
With more than 108 crore mobile phone user, 114 crore Aadhaar accounts, around 1 lakh digitally connected gram panchayats and rapidly growing ecosystem for Digital Payments, India is very well poised to march towards a ‘One Trillion Dollar Digital Economy’ which will not only create employment opportunities for the youth, but also will pave way for exciting business avenues in the ICT and related sector.
