The country’s digital economy should reach a 15% share of the economy in the seventh development plan. In the plans of the Ministry of Communications, it is stated that this share will reach 10% by the end of the government. But what are the main factors of the digital economy?
According to the Iran digital economy annotation, The secretary of the Executive Council of Information Technology summarizes the digital economy in five main indicators and believes that any development in these five indicators will lead to the growth of the digital economy. infrastructure and bandwidth, training of manpower, data sharing, financing tools and ease of doing business are the five main indicators of the digital economy.
The Seventh Development Plan has set a target for the digital economy to reach 15% by the end of its implementation, which is probably 2028, and the Ministry of Communications also says it wants to increase this ratio to 10% by the end of this government. But to what extent can these objectives be realized in the current situation?
Infrastructure, blood in veins
About the first axis, he says: “The first axis is infrastructure, which means that people should be provided with a high bandwidth so that appropriate services can be provided on that bandwidth.”
It seems that this goal will be achieved after the development of optical fiber and more people’s access to fixed bandwidth, because in the current situation, many people are dissatisfied with the quality of the Internet and the speed that is available to them.
In July this year, in a report on the Internet situation in Iran, the Tehran Electronic Commerce Association stated: “The quality of the Internet in Iran is in a critical state. Among the 100 countries with the highest GDP, Iran is the second most disturbed internet after Myanmar, the second limited internet after China, and among the five slowest internet in the world.
Also, after September 2022 and the filtering of WhatsApp and Instagram, people’s need to use filter breakers increased to the point where the parliament Industries Commission announced that 68 percent of people use filter breakers, and some reports estimated this number to be over 90 percent.
On the other hand, the limitation of international bandwidth, whose statistics have not been announced since the beginning of the government, is one of the other problems of the country’s Internet today. Pouya Pirhosseinloo, the head of the Internet Committee of the Electronic Commerce Association, says: “At the beginning of this administration, the international bandwidth was 6.4 terabits, and this amount is frozen and its statistics are not announced.”
Of course, the increase of international bandwidth must be done with the permission of the Supreme Council of Cyber Space, despite this, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has stated many times that there is no limit in providing international bandwidth and if the country needs it, it will provide enough. will be.
The Ministry of Communications has seriously started the project of 20 million optical fiber coverage with the presence of fixed and mobile operators since May last year. Eisa Zarepour often responded to the complaints of people and journalists about the state of the Internet and said that by increasing people’s connection to optical fiber, the problem of Internet speed will be solved, but the problem of Internet in Iran is not only its speed.
Human capital on the way out
He is referring to a part of the 7th development plan, in which the responsibility of training 500,000 specialists for the “development of the country’s digital economy and virtual space” is assigned to the ministries of science, labor, education and health in cooperation with the ministry of communication and information technology.
These ministries must prepare the national program for the development of digital skills of the country, including the creation of new academic fields and courses and revision of the titles of existing academic fields and skill courses at all levels, within 6 months after the notification of the program, and get it approved by the Cabinet of Ministers.
We have to wait and see with what resources and strategies this national program pursues the training of these 500,000 troops. Apart from that, the activists of this field do not consider the situation of human migration of the digital economy to be appropriate.
Maziar Noorbakhsh, the head of the board of directors of Remis, says about the reason for the migration of human resources: “Even if human resources in another country receive a salary of two thousand dollars, it will be 100 million tomans in the national currency of Iran, and certainly professionals in Iranian organizations and companies do not receive such salaries. “
Vahid Khodabakhshi, risk and security manager of Shaparak Company, also says: “The underlying problems of the country, such as the economic problems, have made the country’s expert forces think about migration. On the other hand, the demand for skilled workforce in the field of cyber security is very high in other countries, especially in European countries, and work visas are easily issued for this group. The demand has increased to such an extent that even medium and novice workers can easily immigrate by receiving work visas and applying for employment from European companies.”
It has reached a point where even Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the speaker of the parliament, is worried about this situation: “One of the crises we face is population decline. But we must use the great blessing that we have. We are at the peak today in terms of the youth window of the population and the forces that are dominant in the field of technology, and this is our biggest opportunity, and I think we have not paid attention to this and we are losing this opportunity.
These forces are sometimes leaving the country, and we must use this great opportunity to reach 15 percent of the digital economy and, God forbid, not turn this opportunity into a threat.”
Will the data be nationalized?
Bagheri considers the principle of the third axis to be the sharing of national data with the private sector.
The National Data and Information Management Law, which was passed in the parliament in September last year, tries to tie the hands of executive bodies to keep them exclusive by making national data and information public. In this law, even for not doing these tasks, punishments of dismissal from service for the violator for 6 months to 5 years or imprisonment for 91 days to 6 months have been considered.
Bagheri Asl had said not long ago: “In the Durability Law, non-observance of these approvals was made a crime. I hope that we will not have to use the capacities of Article 9 of the Durability Law and that all the institutions will cooperate with each other. By the end of December, the inter-device inquiries required by these services are also supposed to be online.
So far, no official and detailed report has been published on the level of compliance of the institutions to this law, but according to Bagheri Asl, it seems that the durability law has not yet been implemented with all its capacities.
On the way to initial release
The secretary of the digital economy committee says about the fourth axis: “We need to provide stock market infrastructure and financial tools for businesses.”
In this context, Article 66 of the 7th Development Plan mandates the Ministry of Economy, in cooperation with the Ministry of Communications, to create a specialized stock exchange for companies active in the field of digital and knowledge-based economy, and provide the basis for their listing. Also, for these companies, special stock indices and new financial instruments should be defined and their intangible assets recognized.
Also, in order to accept intangible assets from banks, credit institutions, financial funds and the stock exchange organization and use these assets in validation, collateral and underwriting processes, the Ministry of Economy and Communications should prepare the executive regulations for accepting these assets.
It was May of last year that Tapsi was the first Iranian startup to be offered on the stock exchange. Iranian startups have been talking about their desire to enter the stock market for a long time. This interest intensified especially after 99 and with the explosive growth of the stock market, but nothing special happened in this field after Tapsi.
The seventh development program seeks to facilitate this process by creating a specialized technology exchange. With the creation of this stock exchange, we should expect this to happen, but before that, it seems that we should not wait for a special stock market event in the field of digital economy.
Business facilitation
Bagheri calls the fifth axis the facilitation of business conditions. The ease of doing business report of the World Bank has not been published for several years, but in its latest edition in 2020, Iran was ranked 178th among 190 countries for starting a business, which is not a good ranking, but measures are being followed in this regard.
The Law on Facilitating the Issuance of Business Licenses, which was approved in the parliament in the spring of 2022, seeks to eliminate golden signatures and facilitate economic activity, at least in the beginning. The Ministry of Economy has tried to follow up this facilitation by creating the national license portal.
Also, business licenses are divided into two categories, registration-based and approval-based, in such a way that obtaining registration-based licenses is possible only by registering them in the system, and there is no need for the approval of any institution.
Since then, the Ministry of Economy has tried to report the failure of various devices to connect to this portal and perform legal duties. 526 thousand 178 business licenses have been registered and issued in the national license portal from August last year to September 1 this year.
Also, the total number of business license applications during this period was 1,133,360 applications. Of this amount, nearly 295,710 requests were related to home business licenses, of which only 191,176 licenses were issued.
However, this portal is not without problems to the extent that the Speaker of the Parliament had warned the Ministry of Economy about it: “The Minister of Economy and technical colleagues in the Ministry of Economy and Finance should pay attention to the fact that the national portal for business licenses in the field of technical issues and slowness of the system It has some problems that must be fixed in order to make excuses for the devices that are not able to implement it.” After that, the head of the chamber of guilds also criticized these conditions.
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