ICT minister: $20b investment required to enhance digital economy share
Minister of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), Sattar Hashemi, called on Tuesday for a 20-billion-dollar investment aimed at increasing the share of the digital economy in GDP to 10% as per the Seventh Development Plan (SDP).
“Technology flows through all areas and aspects of our lives, and it's impossible to imagine living an hour without using communication capabilities,” Hashemi said at a meeting in Kerman Province.
Pointing to the fact that one of the most important duties emphasized by the SDP is economic growth, specifically the digital economy, the ICT minister said, “The plan's duty is to increase the share of the digital economy in GDP to 10%, which is currently below 5%, and to achieve this goal, we need a 20 billion dollar investment.”
Stressing that digital economy means how much we have been able to utilize technology's capacity to make services and products more productive, Hashemi said, “To achieve the 10% share, we inevitably must move towards the smartification of industries and mines, and Kerman can certainly be a trailblazer and helper in this path."
The ICT minister also underscored the need for “communication infrastructures of appropriate quality” for digital transformation.
“One of the issues on the agenda of the current government, after a century, is the migration from copper wire to fiber optic, and this large and lasting project will pave the way for digital transformation and the formation of a new economy in this field,” he said.
“The smartification of industries helps sustainable employment, and the content production ecosystem, which is extremely important, and data flows into the infrastructure, and all these events are possible with the private sector at the core. The important issue in this regard is that we can keep the province's elites in Kerman and make them a driving force for transformation and the digital economy,” he added.
Hashemi concluded that as we move towards a digital economy, cybersecurity becomes more important, and we are ready to advance work through interaction.