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Regions close digital gap with urban centers: East Ventures
The Singapore-based capital venture firm’s latest digital competitiveness index shows that Indonesian cities and regencies are closing in on the country’s urban centers.
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Digital art is displayed on Jan. 21, 2022 at Tokocrypto T-Hub in Badung, Bali. (JP/Eisya Eloksari)
J
akarta and the cities surrounding it may be far ahead of the rest of the country when it comes to developing and applying new technologies, but a survey by a leading investor in Indonesian start-ups says this is gradually changing as cities and regencies outside Greater Jakarta show steady improvement in digital competitiveness.
“[The] spread value between the highest performing city/regency with the lowest is also getting narrower, which indicates the decrease in the digital competitiveness gap,” East Ventures (EV) said in a press release published on Tuesday to accompany its survey report, titled Digital Competitiveness Index 2022: Towards Indonesia’s Digital Golden Era.
The venture capital firm assessed the annual digital competitiveness of Indonesia’s cities and regencies and found that the gaps between top-ranking and bottom-ranking regions had narrowed from 2020 to 2021. This narrowed even further over the following year to 2022, with Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta, Bekasi and Depok topping the latest rankings.
Indonesia’s digital economy has grown at a dynamic pace even as other sectors struggled during the coronavirus pandemic, partly because consumers looked for online alternatives to avoid physical contact when shopping, banking or learning.
Read also: Yearender 2021: Indonesia’s digital economy got bigger, not necessarily better
However, the findings of the East Ventures-Digital Competitiveness Index (EV-DCI) 2022 also indicate “that the middle and bottom groups are continuously growing and catching up to the top-ranked cities/regencies”, according to Pheseline Felim, the firm’s head of media and marketing.
The EV-DCI 2022 takes into account the digital infrastructure readiness, human resources, digital economic activities and local policies of a city or regency.
