IT services, products to add 7.7% of GDP by 2008: Pant

Planning Commission said on Tuesday that IT products and services should be made available in major Indian languages to expand their reach, since they were projected to contribute 7.7 per cent of the GDP by 2008 from the present level of 1.7 per cent.

“One of the biggest challenges before us is to make IT available in local languages. Unless IT products and services are available in major Indian languages, just as they are available in Europe, the use of IT will not reach its ultimate potential in the country. It is here that the major problem of ‘digital divide’ will have to be tackled,” Planning Commission Deputy Chairman K.C. Pant said here.

Pant said problems were being encountered in providing IT access to an average person including high cost of a computer, frequent power failure, high rate of obsolescence in software and a telephone line connection for accessing the internet.

Pant was delivering the inaugural address at a tripartite workshop organised by International Labour Organisation in New Delhi. Pant said perhaps ‘cyber poverty’ could be included in the human development framework that has been developed and refined by the UNDP.