Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said that digital public infrastructure (DPI) is inclusive by design and can help countries fast pace their development processes and deliver huge benefits.
India has opened a record 462.5 million low-cost bank accounts with 56 percent account holders being women by leveraging the potential of identity and payments through DPI, the finance minister underlined.
Speaking at a conference on April 14 in Washington, US, Sitharaman said that DPI has transferred tremendous transformational potential by facilitating innovations continuously by involving the government as well as private sector. “Development and leveraging of DPI indeed sets a virtuous cycle in motion, which incessantly deliver huge benefits for countries to fast pace development processes,” she said while addressing the “Digital Public Infrastructure: Stacking Up the Benefits” organised by the International Monetary Fund.
The benefits of DPI will go a long way in strengthening the endeavour to achieve strong, inclusive, resilient and sustainable economic growth, she said.
DPI comes with innate features such as interoperability, openness, low-cost access and transparency, and these make it inclusive by design, Sitharaman said. “This has and is helping India in addressing the various digital divide challenges. The scalability feature of our DPI makes investments economical and is therefore, beneficial to the end user as the cost can be minimised, or the access made all together free. This is pro-inclusion,” she added.
