The Narendra Modi-led central government, for the first time, will measure the size of India’s ‘digital economy’. So far, only agencies do this while a Google report recently projected India to be a $1-trillion ‘digital economy’ by 2030.
Now, the Centre before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections has decided to put a figure to the size of this ‘digital economy’, number of jobs created under it since the launch of the ‘Digital India’ in 2015, provide a five-year projection and assess its impact on specific segments like e-commerce.
News18 accessed a government document on this. The government has put prime focus on ‘digitalisation’ but the measurement of the ‘digital economy’ has not been institutionalised in India. Sectoral agencies and participants do not capture or report data, which directly relates to the value add on account of digital technologies.
Hence, the government now wants to capture and showcase the impact that the ‘Digital India’ programme has had on the digital profile of the country since 2015. Projections will also be made from 2023-24 till 2029-30, officials said.
How will the government measure the ‘digital economy’?
According to senior officials, an exercise will be conducted over the next nine months involving “estimation and measurement of India’s digital economy”, including formulation of measurement framework, capturing data and identifying digital interventions. This will also involve a thorough review of the existing literature and methodologies on the digital economy measurement frameworks across the globe and find a robust framework and methodology suitable for India, the officials told News18.
Officials said this exercise will also identify gaps in data in estimating the size of India’s digital economy, provide suitable policy recommendations for boosting its size and growth as well as identify suitable pathways for focus sectors that will augment its size by 2030.
India is seen among the world’s fastest growing digital economies, driven by digital payments and the use of UPI (Unified Payments Interface).
Analysing impact of e-commerce key part of exercise
Officials further said a key part will be to capture the impact of e-commerce and emerging technologies on the digital economy. The ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) had published a report on ‘India’s Trillion Dollar Digital Opportunity’ in 2019.
The government believes that the ‘Digital India’ programme has put India on a digital roadmap and achieved inclusion and empowerment of citizens, expansion of the digital economy, jobs, entrepreneurship and investments. It has led to the emergence of India as a global leader in technology with growing capabilities in scalable public digital platforms, fintech, digital infrastructure and electronics.
“India’s digital transformation necessitates the analysis of different drivers of digital economy (like electronics, IT/ITeS, skilling, etc), their contribution in the overall digital economy of India and establishment of mechanisms to track the progress of key performance indicators across these categories,” the government document states.
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