Bengaluru: G20 ministers responsible for the digital economy met in Bengaluru on Saturday and agreed that the Global South and other countries should adopt digital public infrastructure to digitalise their economies.
“There were three major priority areas for the G20 meeting. First was DPI, second was information security or cybersecurity, and the third was skilling. For all three areas we got a very good consensus, and an outcome document was adopted today by the entire G20 ministers meeting,” Ashwini Vaishnav minister for communications, IT and railways said after the meeting.
The ministers from G20 countries experienced, many of them first-hand, the ease of using digital public infrastructure in India, which is what led to the consensus.
“This is a very good proof of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision, which he started with Digital India, and that has democratized technology. Forty crore people are getting banking services, and this has been admired and appreciated by every participant in the G20 meeting,” the minister added.
Brazil will take over the presidency from India next year and will take forward the work done during India’s presidency, he added.
G20 members agreed on the importance of digital public infrastructure for digital inclusion and innovation; building safety, security, resilience and trust in the digital economy; and digital skilling for building a global, future-ready workforce, they said in the outcome document issued after the meeting.
“In the context of the digital economy, we respect applicable legal frameworks. We also seek to foster a digital economy that promotes respect for human rights, privacy, and protection of personal data for all, and contributes to the implementation of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development and achievement of sustainable development goals,” they added.
Russia and China did not agree to the inclusion of para 24 in the outcome document, which talked about the adverse impact of the Russia-Ukraine war on the global economy, noting that G20 was not the forum for resolving security issues.
