Sri Lanka’s NRI ranking 69th out of 144 proves its great ICT strides: ICTA CEO

The Networked Readiness Index (NRI) 2013 reflects the great and multiple strides reached in the country’s ICT sector, asserted ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) CEO Reshan Dewapura.

“The Global Information Technology Report (GITR) published for the 12th consecutive year corroborates that Sri Lanka continues to make huge progress in the ICT sector. The report published by the World Economic Forum and the Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires (INSEAD) is a source of strength for the country to advance further,” Dewapura added.

Sri Lanka has improved its ICT standing including the overall position by two places in the Global Networked Readiness Index (NRI) published in the ‘Global Information Technology Report (GITR)’ 2013. Last year this overall position stood at 71. This year it stands at 69.

The NRI assesses the comparative impact of ICT in the countries concerned (144 economies in 2013) under four sub-indices and 10 pillars coming under these sub-indexes and several indicators under the pillars. The sub-indexes are environment, readiness, usage, and impact. The pillars are: political and regulatory environment, business and innovation environment, infrastructure and digital content, affordability, skills, individual usage, business usage, Government usage, economic impacts and social impacts.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is based in Cologny, Geneva. INSEAD is a world-renowned graduate business school headquartered in New York with campuses in France, Singapore and Abu Dhabi. The NRI was originally developed by the Information Technology Group which worked at the Harvard University’s Centre for International Development until 2002.

As indicated above this time 144 countries were surveyed in preparing the NRI 2013 and Sri Lanka fetched the 69th place improving from the 71st place it occupied last year. Sri Lanka’s NRI (2013) also makes it the second highest ranked among South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries, trailing India by just one rank. However, the absolute value or score for both Sri Lanka and India is the same.

Sri Lanka and India are the only two SAARC countries ranked higher than the 100th mark. Out of other SAARC countries, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal stand respectively at 105, 114 and 126. South Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines rank behind Sri Lanka as per the Networked Readiness Index 2013.

Sri Lanka has scored very high in the affordability measure (4th pillar) with mobile cellular tariffs ranking at fifth place based on purchasing power parity and second for fixed broadband.

In pillar 1, Political and regulatory environment, Sri Lanka ranks 25th in effectiveness of law-making bodies, including Parliament; and ranks respectively 33rd and 34th in efficiency of legal system in settling disputes and efficiency of legal system in challenging regulations.  At the core of the report, the NRI measures the preparedness of an economy to use ICT to boost competitiveness and well-being. In this edition, Finland (1st), Singapore (2nd) and Sweden (3rd) continue to lead the NRI, with the Netherlands (4th), Norway (5th), Switzerland (6th), the United Kingdom (7th), Denmark (8th), the United States (9th) and Taiwan, China (10th) completing the top 10.

However the report highlights the lack of progress in bridging the new digital divide – not only in terms of developing ICT infrastructure but also in economic and social impact. Despite rapid adoption of mobile telephony, most developing economies lag behind advanced economies due to environments that are insufficiently conducive to innovation and competitiveness.

On the other hand, the report shows the progress that countries are making to fully use ICT to boost higher productivity, economic growth and quality jobs in the current economic environment. Finally, the report reveals an apparent investment threshold in ICT, skills and innovation beyond which return on investment increases significantly.