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19 Oct 2011

UN Report Recommends a Better Leverage of ICT in Private Sector Development

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Beirut, 19 October 2011 (United Nations Information Centre) – UN Information Centre in Beirut (UNIC-Beirut) held a press conference today at the UN House to launch the Information Economy Report (IER) 2011. The report, entitled “IER 2011: Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) as an Enabler for Private Sector Development,” is issued by the Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Speakers at the press conference were ESCWA Director of Information and Communication Technology Division Haidar Fraihat and First Information Technology Officer at ESCWA Rami Zaatari. Fraihat said in his opening statement "the UN has placed great importance on the vital and central role of the private sector in achieving sustainable development and the Millennium Development Goals.” He noted that the development of the private sector is essential to the achievement of equitable and comprehensive economic development. “Member countries are working on providing support to the private sector in creating real jobs opportunities, increasing income levels and productivity, and diversifying their economies. This ensures governmental revenues to member countries that won’t be exhausting to citizens or to the private sector that drives the economy,” he added. Fraihat revealed that "the challenge resides with policy-makers to mobilize the considerable improvement in the spread and use of ICT to push forward economic development in order to benefit the peoples of the region from all segments." He pointed out that "ESCWA would like to take this opportunity to urge member countries and their partners in development to review the report and carefully consider the recommendations, and to reiterate its confidence in the media to give appropriate coverage for this important topic." Zaatari, for his part, highlighted the main findings of this year’s report with a focus on ESCWA region, noting that “in the least developed countries, the penetration level surged from only five mobile subscriptions per 100 inhabitants in 2005 to 33 in 2010.” He said that the report looks into the case of Egypt where the value added of the ICT sector has reached 5.6 billion USD, corresponding to 3.8 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), most of which was accounted for by telecommunication services and the mobile sector. “A person in developed countries is 300 times more likely to have access to fixed broadband than a person in least developed countries,” he added. Zaatari also pointed out that UNCTAD predicts that many people in low-income countries will be affected in the coming years by an expansion of the off shoring of “micro-work” and of the dynamic mobile sector. IER 2011 gives special attention to the role of ICTs in accelerating private sector development in developing countries. It identifies ways of leveraging ICTs to create real economic impact in developing countries through bridging the digital gap between small enterprises and larger ones. It is mentioned in the report that Jordan is a good example, where virtually all enterprises with more than 250 employees are using the Internet for transactions, but only six per cent of the country’s micro-enterprises adopt the Web for sales and customer contact. More than three quarters of medium-sized and large enterprises in Brazil, Colombia, Qatar, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates already enjoy broadband Internet access, but the corresponding share is much lower in other developing countries, especially in the case of small enterprises. UNCTAD’s report further shows that developing countries’ enterprises use the internet mostly to obtain information rather than to conduct transactions with governments. Governments can improve access to relevant information and facilitate transaction services such as payment of taxes online, payment of utilities, and automate customs systems. According to UNCTAD, very few PSD projects aimed at supporting women entrepreneurs are taking full advantage of ICTs. The report concluded several policy recommendations, such as: including ICT modules in business skills training programmes; better leveraging of ICTs in support of women’s entrepreneurship; harnessing mobile money services to make financial markets more inclusive; using ICT tools to reduce the costs of business transactions and to help Medium and Small Enterprises (MSEs) bring their goods and services to domestic and international markets; adopting regulatory frameworks to build confidence in the use of new technologies or new applications of a known technology; and developing donor guidelines to ensure that the ICT potential is fully reflected in their PSD strategies.
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