India slips to 83rd spot on leveraging ICT for growth: WEF

NEW YORK: India slid down to 83rd spot among 148 economies in terms of leveraging information and communications technologies (ICT) for growth and well being, says a World Economic Forum report.

In 2013, it ranked 68th out of 144 countries. According to the 13th edition of the Global Information Technology Report 2014, little progress has been made in bridging the gap between the world's most networked economies and the rest of the world.

Many large emerging economies continue to struggle to realise their full digital potential and feature lower down the index, while developed economies feature on the top.

Among emerging market economies, China was placed on the 62nd position, Brazil (69th), Mexico (79th) and India (83rd).

India is the least performing of the BRICS economies and the drop in rankings can be traced back mainly to difficulties in improving historical limitations and keeping up with other emerging economies in several dimensions.

"India's networked readiness profile remains hindered by the quality of its political, regulatory, and business environment and its lack of digital infrastructure," the report said.

Finland was placed in the first place, followed by Singapore and Sweden in the second and third spots.

Other economies in the top ten include, the Netherlands (4th), Norway (5th) and Switzerland (6th), the United States (7th) Hong Kong SAR (8th) the United Kingdom (9th) and the Republic of Korea (10th).

"In addition to the persistent digital divide across countries, governments should also be wary of understanding, identifying and addressing potential internal digital divides so that new opportunities can be created for all and support enhanced social inclusion," said Benat Bilbao-Osorio, senior economist at the WEF's Global Competitiveness and Benchmarking Network and co-editor of the report.

The report is the result of a long-standing partnership between the WEF and INSEAD, and since last year, also with the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University.