Digital economy spurs macroeconomic expansion
This connection between the digital economy and the macro economy is evidenced globally, where the growth of the digital economy contributes positively to the overall speed of growth in the macro economy, a top official said.
“In this sector, whether it’s in cybersecurity or whether it’s in digital transformation, within the overall trust of driving the digital economy, we are not doing an IT project or automation, we are driving Sri Lanka’s economy,” Chief Advisor to the President on Digital Economy, Dr Hans Wijayasuriya said.
This connection between the digital economy and the macro economy has been shown in the world (such as in India), where as a component of the digital economy within the larger economy grows, it gives an uplift in percentage terms to the speed of growth in the macro economy, he said, addressing the National Cybersecurity Conference this week in Colombo.
India is growing at over 8 per cent and targeting a 10 per cent growth in five years. The Government of India is attributing the momentum of this potential growth to the growth in the size of its digital economy.
He said that it is this expansion of the digital economy that gives a boost or a kick to the growth of the overall economy. “To put shape and form into this drive of economic growth, we have set ourselves some very ambitious targets Such as to grow the size of the digital economy by five times from US$3.5 billion to over $15 billion and to increase the percentage from 3 to 4 per cent to 12 per cent. “We also target to grow the digital industry, our software exports, our services exports by three times from around $1.8 billion today to over $5 billion in the next 5-years.”
“The objective is to use digital transformation as a driver of growth in the macro economy. “We target to move our relative position, on all the benchmarks and indices you find in the digital space, including the benchmarks and indices related to trust and cyber resilience, to move up position by around 25 points, meaning from where we are in the 3rd to 4th quartile globally into the second or third quartile. These targets are interesting and challenging. They also represent targets which are relative, meaning relative to others, relative to other countries. Therefore, there is an element of transformation of growth which gives you the absolute values and absolute targets, but also, very importantly, there’s an element of being better and doing better than others, which is an element of competitiveness,” Dr. Wijayasuriya said.
He noted that this becomes very important as increasingly digital methodologies, digital tools, especially artificial intelligence, which is provided in all sectors of economies today, are now located at the very epicentre of national competitiveness. A country which is falling behind in terms of its position in AI and with respect to digital transformation and the use of digital tools, he said, will see the gap between such a country and a country which is adopting and growing its digital tools rapidly increase. “Therefore, the competitive advantage of an economy will be determined to a large extent by the competitiveness of the country in the digital space.”
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