The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has noted that India's digital economy has grown at more than twice the rate of India's economy growth. This was mentioned in the Measuring India’s Digital Economy report included in the central bank's monthly bulletin that was published on Tuesday.
The report further highlights that the Gross Value Addition (GVA) of India's core digital economy has increased over 3 per cent in a span of 5 years. GVA is a measure of economic productivity that a sector has contributed to the economy. In 2015, the GVA of India's core digital economy stood at 5.4 per cent and it reached 8.5 per cent by 2019. Core digital economy includes hardware, software publishing, web publishing, telecommunication services, and other specialised services.
The central bank's report states that the country’s digital economy has shown strong forward linkages to non-digital sectors. A sector is said to show a forward linkage when the output from that sector is utilised as inputs in another sector. As such, the investments made in India's digital economy are driving growth in other sectors as well.
The employment estimates included in the report point out that 4.9 million people were employed in the core digital sector. When other sectors that are digitally dependent are factored in, around 62.4 million workers are employed in digitally disrupted sectors.
