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Prime Minister Scott Morrison envisages Australia to be one of the world's leading digital economies in the next ten years.
At the E-Commerce Summit at Parliament House in Canberra, he highlighted the adoption of digital technologies by businesses and consumers at warp speed during the pandemic. Now, the prime minister wants to springboard off the health and economic crisis to pull Australia out of the recession.
After health crisis, the virus-stricken economy is the most significant problem that world leaders are facing currently. Following the first wave of the pandemic, the Federal government intended to re-open the economy in a phase-wise manner. However, the second wave of the virus paralysed those plans.
Pandemic pushed the digital boom
Between the period of March 2020 and May 2020, Australia Post delivered 26 million extra parcels, an average of two million each day.
Also read: E-commerce Boom & Stocks Benefitting from Online Shopping Surge: CCX, BBN, APT, KGN, GMG
During April 2020, 5.2 million Australian households purchased items from e-commerce websites, and over 200,000 were doing so for the first time. In August 2020, online sales soared above AUD 3 billion, an 81 per cent increase on the previous year.
Economic downfall amid digitalisation
The PM stated that despite the innovation and the digital acceleration, the pandemic massively hit the Australian economy.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, several Aussie businesses were hesitant to embrace digital technologies. Small businesses hardly spent on these new-age technologies. However, now the picture is different.
Companies are ferociously adapting to these technologies to remain unaffected by the impact of the pandemic. Still, the Australian economy is undergoing the worst set of economic conditions since the Great Depression.
Must read: Digital technologies revamping businesses
When the virus hit Australia in March 2020, companies were quick to reshape their operations. Within the first three weeks, one in four changed their delivery models and nearly a third expanded their digital presence. When almost nine in 10 Australian companies adopted digital technologies and went online, the consumers also followed them.
The prime minister is focussing on digital regulations, open banking, consumer data rights, and cybersecurity. He is putting upgrades to the national broadband network. The investments in 5G technologies are at the core of his pitch.
He said that every Australian business must embrace the online technologies as the digital economy is central to creating jobs during the challenging economic times.
