Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Wednesday officially handed over the G20 presidency to India at the end of a summit of the bloc's leaders in Bali, Reuters news agency reported.
The Group of 20 major economies adopted a joint leaders' declaration and produced other partnerships, Jokowi, as the president is known, said.
Meanwhile, India’s upcoming G20 presidency will focus on bridging the digital divide, especially in developing countries, and ensuring greater benefits from digital technologies and transformation, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said.
Addressing a session on digital transformation at the G20 Summit in Bali, Modi urged other G20 leaders to pledge that they will work together for digital inclusion over the next decade, according to Hindustan Times online.
“The principle of ‘data for development’ will be an integral part of the overall theme of our presidency, ‘One Earth, One Family, One Future’,” he said.
“In India, we are making digital access public but at the international level, there is still a huge digital divide. Citizens of most developing countries of the world do not have any kind of digital identity. Only 50 countries have digital payment systems,” he said, speaking in Hindi.
“Can we take a pledge together that in the next 10 years, we will bring digital transformation in the life of every human being, so that no person in the world will be deprived of the benefits of digital technology.”
Modi said that during its G20 presidency in 2023, India will work jointly with partners in the grouping of the world’s 20 largest economies to achieve this objective.
India to host next G20 summit in 2023
India will host the next summit in New Delhi in September 2023.
Digital issues and reforms of multilateral financial institutions are among the focus areas for India’s G20 presidency.
Modi described digital transformation as the “most remarkable change of our era” and said the proper use of digital technologies can be a force multiplier in the decades-long global fight against poverty. “Digital solutions can also be helpful in the fight against climate change – as we all saw in the examples of remote-working and paperless green offices during Covid,” he said.
These benefits will be realised only when digital access is truly inclusive and when use of digital technology is widespread. “Unfortunately, till now we have seen this powerful tool only from the criteria of simple business, keeping this power tied in the ledgers of profit and loss,” he said.
Modi said G20 leaders are responsible for ensuring that benefits of digital transformation are not be confined to a small part of the human race.
“India’s experience of the past few years has shown us that if we make digital architecture inclusive, it can bring about socio-economic transformation. Digital use can bring scale and speed. Transparency can be brought in governance,” he said, noting that India has developed digital public goods whose “basic architecture has in-built democratic principles”.
These solutions are based on open source, open APIs and open standards that are interoperable and public. “This is our approach based on the digital revolution that is going on in India today,” he said.
Citing the example of India’s Unified Payment Interface (UPI), he said more than 40% of the world’s real-time payment transactions last year were done through UPI. India opened 460 million new bank accounts using digital identity, making the country a leader in financial inclusion. The open source CoWIN platform ensured the success of the largest vaccination campaign, he said.
(With inputs from agencies)
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