Terming the digital payment infrastructure service as rising industry, Union minister of electronics and information technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad said Haryana has lot of potential and possibilities for innovation in the field of digital payment, internet, artificial intelligence, digital education and cyber security.
“Digitalisation and digital payment in particular will provide lot of potential for small and middle level enterprise to grow. For this they need to innovate and come with new and unique solutions,” said Prasad adding that Pravasi can play big role in exploring this new opportunity with innovation.
Lauding demonitisation Prasad said it will lead to creation of digital eco system in the country, which will change the future. “Digital payment is going to create a new digital infrastructure in India for digital payments. Digital payment infrastructure and service would become a rising industry,” said Prasad adding that minimum of 10 million Point of Sale (POS) machines and industrial machines is needed apart from mobile wallets for the digital payment. He said that India has nearly 105 crore mobile phones, 10 crore Aadhaar cards, 500 billion internet connections and 350 billion smart phones.
Along with the digital payment, government is also focusing on manufacturing of electronic products and mobile phone. “About 42 mobile phone manufacturing companies and 30 component factories have been established in the country in last two years,” said Prasad adding that with its focus on electronics manufacturing, the union government has planned to set up 18 clusters in 400 towns and cities. He said that India’s electronics manufacturing market would be of 400 billion dollars by 2020.
Prasad was speaking at a session on ‘IT-ITeS and ESDM: The next era of State’s Growth and Innovation’ at Pravasi Haryana Diwas in Gurgaon.
Supporting the digitalisation, Haryana industries and commerce minister Vipul Goel said out of the 6000 villages of state optical fiber has been laid in 3,500 villages. “Along with providing digital infrastructure we are also focusing on digital education,” said Goyal adding that BHIM App launched by union government will be implemented in sate soon. He said that digital literacy is important for digital India and the state government is providing everything for this. He said that the state government is working to develop the electronic and mobile sector and soon they are planning to come up with a policyfor mobile and electronic manufacturing units.
Haryana government announced to shortly introduce policies for different sectors including Aerospace and Defence Policy, IT and ESDM Policy, Retail Policy, Start Up and Innovation Policy, Textile Policy and Food Processing Policy.
Besides, state is also planning to come up with new policies in the power sector to address the existing problems of industries and encourage setting up new industries. “We have enough power to meet our demands; there are some issues in distribution so we are investing hugely in this area. Along with this we are taking several policy measures to place Haryana as ideal investment destination,” said principal secretary of Haryana for power Anurag Rastogi adding that they are going to offer very attractive tariff for setting new industrial units.
By Baishakhi Dutta
