Our economy is changing: What to expect?
WITH regulations possibly being tabled at the year-end State Legislative Assembly sitting this year, it seems like it should be only a matter of time before we get the ball rolling on our advent into the digital era. So what changes are we going to expect?
On the e-commerce front, Wong believed that overall trade would improve drastically, adding that the main advantages was that it would allow merchants and consumers alike to access fast and easy products and services globally.
“Buying and selling can occur 24 hours and 7 days a week. There is no time limit when it comes to e-commerce and it can happen anywhere in the world,” he added to BizHive Wekly.
“This means you can have greater customer bridges and not limited to geographical boundaries.
“The whole world becomes borderless and they are interconnected through ICT. And with that, there will be more variety of products and services offered – promoting healthier competition within industries which will result in higher quality of products and services.”
These benefits are to be expected and with our e-commerce industry projected to be worth over RM114 billion by 2020 with no interference from government initiatives, our economy is likely to receive a significant boost from it.
But beyond financial gain and e-commerce growth, what else can we expected to change?
Well, according to president of the Australian Computer Society Anthony Wong, there will also be plenty of positive societal impacts and changes to look out for also.
In an interview with BizHive Weekly, Anthony who was also an invited speaker to the recent International ICT Infrastructure and Digital Economy Conference Sarawak 2017, highlighted that embracing our digital economy will not only spur economic growth as it has in Australia but also change the requirements of our workforce.
Anthony, who is also Sarawakian, explained that as businesses adopt more digital tech, their employees will similarly need to learn to adapt and navigate in their new environment by picking up more ICT skills.
Currently, the MCMC is reporting that 43.2 per cent of our internet users require ICT usage skills at their place of work while 17.9 per cent require ICT technical skills. Anthony expects these figures to boost drastically as we continue to embrace technology, with some of our jobs disappearing entirely to be replaced by computer and robots.
While a takeover by computer and robots might sound terrifying, Anthony explained that it would only be for the more repetitive jobs and most jobs on the market right now would most likely be safeguarded as long as it requires form of skill that robotics cannot replace.