MeitY invites proposals to estimate the size of India's digital economy

Govt plans to showcase success of India's digital economy at the G20 summit to be held in New Delhi in Sept

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) on Wednesday invited proposals to take up the task of estimating the size of India’s digital economy as well as the rankings and measurement of the share of the states in this area.

Interested parties may work on creating a digital economy measurement framework. They may also need to come up with measurements and projections of the size of the digital economy for states along with rankings of states based on the size of their digital economies.

As reported earlier, the government plans to showcase the success of India’s digital economy during the G20 summit to be held in New Delhi in September. It may also offer conditional help to other countries to further advance their own digital economy and payments infrastructure.

The Centre released a report on India's trillion-dollar digital opportunity in 2019, which says digital transformation could empower un-served and under-served segments and create $1 trillion in economic value in 2025, sustaining 60-65 million jobs. It adds that $390-500 billion of this $1 trillion economic value would come from digital applications in core economic and social sectors like agriculture, health, and education.

“The study identified 30 digital themes ranging from IT infrastructure, software capabilities, and healthcare education to next-generation financial service. To achieve this, concerted action is required in a 'Team India' spirit with collaboration between government and private or social sectors,” the IT ministry said in the invitation for proposals.

It added that the first meeting of the working group is likely to be held in the early second week of March 2023, for the purpose of assessment of proposals on the subject.

The main tasks of the interested parties include identifying digital interventions to realise India’s trillion-dollar digital economy potential and the challenges in implementing them. In addition to this, the participants will carry out research and statistical analysis on the digital economy and Digital India initiatives for helping in decision-making, setting up and maintaining a dashboard for the digital economy, and studying and analysis of any other subject or sector contributing to the digital economy.