Digital technology is vital for economic growth
All the think tanks in the world including the World Bank and the IMF are talking about adopting digital technology to overcome the adverse effects of the world economy. It was the COVID-19 pandemic that forced people to adopt digital technology to stay afloat in their future endeavours, said the Vice PresidentEnterprise Business Group – Huawei Technologies Lanka Co, (Pvt) Ltd Indika De Zoyza at a media briefing held at the Uga Residence at Park Street Colombo 7 last week.
He said by adopting digital technology as done in other parts of the world solutions to economic problems can be overcome. “During the lockdown period many digital solutions were available for making payments etc but credit card holders could not simply make any payments to settle purchases due to systems being not integrated and upgraded together. The main task ahead is to find solutions to revive the world economy following the coronavirus pandemic that devastated the world economy as a whole. The tourism industry and the remittances sent by expatriate Sri Lankan workers in West Asia were stalled as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said.
Referring to digital technology such as artificial intelligence ( AI) and cloud computing, he said huge amounts of monies have been invested by countries such as China, the US and Europe to revive their affected economies. “They are building platforms on digital technology such as a 5G technology corridor in Europe by investing billions of US dollars. Drone technology will be created in future to deliver food and medicine in the world. Even in South Korea digital technology is upgraded by increasing their investment by 50 per cent following COVID- 19. Even in Sri Lanka digital technology has become a paramount and vital investment to revive the sagging economy. The Presidential Task Force on Digital Infrastructure has been entrusted with the task of expanding the digital network,” he added.
Director Public and Communication Department Huawei Technologies Lanka Co (Pvt) Ltd, Christophe Tsing Lee and Manager Jithendra Antonio participated at the media briefing.