New Delhi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said that India is witnessing unprecedented digital transformation and its digital economy will be worth one trillion dollars by 2025.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the BRICS Business Forum in virtual format, Mr Modi said that the growth of the digital sector also encouraged the participation of women in the workforce “Transformative changes are taking place in every sector in the emerging 'New India'. This year, we are expecting 7.5 percent growth, which makes us the fastest growing major economy,’’ the Prime Minister said.

He said that India adopted the mantra of ‘reform, perform and transform’  to deal with economic problems arising out of the pandemic and the results of this approach are evident from the performance of the Indian economy.

Mr Modi said that BRICS was established with the belief that this group of emerging economies can evolve as an engine of global growth. “Today when the whole world is focusing on post-COVID recovery, then the role of BRICS countries will become very important.’’

The Prime Minister said, “Today I want to draw your attention on four main aspects. A key pillar of India's current economic recovery is technology-led growth. We are supporting innovation in every sector. We have made innovation-friendly policies in many areas like space, blue economy, green hydrogen, clean energy, drones, geo-spatial data, etc. Today, India has one of the best eco-systems in the world for innovation, which is reflected in the growing number of Indian start-ups. There are more than 100 unicorns in over 70,000 start-ups in India, and their number continues to grow.’’

He said that even during the pandemic, India continued to make efforts to improve the ease of doing business. Thousands of rules have been changed to reduce the compliance burden on the business. Work is going on at a massive scale to bring in more transparency and consistency in government policies and procedures.

He drew attention to large scale improvement in infrastructure in India. “For the same, India has prepared a National Master Plan. There are investment opportunities of $1.5 trillion under our National Infrastructure Pipeline.’’

The PM said that there are approximately 36 per cent women out of 4.4 million professionals working in our IT sector. “The maximum benefit from Technology-based financial inclusion has also been gone to the women in our rural areas. BRICS Women Business Alliance can undertake study in this transformative change in India. Similarly, we can have a useful dialogue on innovation-led economic recovery.’’

He suggested that the BRICS Business Forum develop a platform for regular exchanges between our start-ups. The BRICS Business Forum was established in 2010. Its meeting is held generally on the eve of the summits to expand and diversify trade and mutual investments through identification of new business opportunities.