The draft national policy on Information Technology 2011 in India focuses on increasing revenues of the IT and ITES industry from $ 88 billion at present to $300 billion by 2020.
India’s vision to become a $300 billion IT and ITES powerhouse by 2020 will fuel investment in telecom sector. Majority of the draft guidelines in the draft national policy will assist in bringing additional capex in telecom segment, according to a CEO of a telecom infrastructure company.
If the government is looking at leveraging ICT for key social sector initiatives like education, health, rural development and financial services to promote equity and quality, operators will be encouraged to invest heavily in telecom infrastructure.
According to Ovum, mobile operators are expected to invest $9070 million in 2011, $10579 million in 2012, $11829 million in 2013, $11501 million in 2014 and $11624 million in 2015. The national draft policy on IT will further stimulate investments in telecom.
The draft national IT policy 2011 says around 80 percent of the IT and ITES revenue came from exports in 2010-11. The policy proposes to encourage growth of indigenous demands and market. The proposed policy also aims at formulating fiscal and other incentives to attract investment in this sector in Tier II and Tier III cities.
The Indian IT and ITES sector currently employs over 2.5 million skilled people and has been one of the major employment generators in the last two decades.
HIGHLIGHTS OF The DRAFT POLICY
· Formulate fiscal and other policies to attract investment in IT Industry in Tier II & Tier III cities.
· Promote innovation and R&D in cutting edge technologies and development of applications and solutions in areas like localization, location based services, mobile value added services, Cloud Computing, Social Media and Utility models.
· Provide fiscal benefits to SMEs and startups in the key industrial sectors for adoption of IT in value creation
· Leverage Internet, Web and mobile technologies for developing new products, technologies and businesses.
· Integrate Internet based and mobile based delivery of services onto a common platform to enable seamless, ubiquitous, secure and personalized delivery of government and non-government services throughout the country
· Integrate Aadhaar, financial and location-based services into this integrated platform to foster an ecosystem for innovation in services
· Create a pool of 10 million additional skilled manpower in ICT.
· Make at least one individual in every household e-literate.
· Extend the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) and mandate provision of all Government services through Electronic mode within a fixed time frame by enactment of the Electronic Delivery of Services (EDS) Bill
· Enhance transparency, accountability, efficiency, reliability and decentralization in Government and in particular, in delivery of public services.
· Leverage ICT for key social sector initiatives like Education, Health, Rural Development and Financial Services to promote equity and quality.
· Make India global hub for development of language technologies to encourage and facilitate development of content accessible in all Indian languages and thereby help bridge the digital divide.
· Enable access of content and ICT applications by differently abled people to foster inclusive development.
· Facilitate adoption of ICTs in key economic and strategic sectors to improve their competitiveness and productivity.
· Strengthen the Regulatory and Security Framework for ensuring a Secure Cyberspace ecosystem.
By Baburajan K
editor@telecomlead.com