Digital India to pep up India’s GDP by 20-30% by 2025, says Alphons

New Delhi, Oct 12: Digital India program has the potential to provide an incremental 20-30 per cent increase in India’s GDP by 2025, Minister of State for Electronics and IT, KJ Alphons said today. Inaugurating the ASSOCHAM 13th National Summit on e-Governance and Digital India here on Thursday, Mr Alphons said India has made significant progress in several initiatives under Digital India since its launch in 2015 and many flagship projects under the program have now moved from the planning phase to the execution phase. The progress made in these projects and across the three vision areas of Digital India has started to show an impact on the lives of citizens and on businesses, Alphons said. He said government to people interaction through technology has never been so high in the country before 2015. “IT never reached ordinary people, Digital India is the biggest revolution happening in world,” he said. The Minister said, digital technology is bridging the gaps in financial and social inclusion with initiatives such as Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT). The thrust is now to take these benefits of technology from block level to district level, he added. Stressing on the need to hold regular interaction of government and industry to share innovative ideas to take the digitization revolution to next level, Alphons said the government was open to ideas and the two must meet once in a month to share and discuss innovative ideas. UNI