clues posterous

According to a Guardian article, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) funded by Google UK, has produced a report on the economic value of the internet on the UK economy, estimating that it accounts for 7,2% of the 2009 GDP or £100 billion. The impressive thing is that this brings the internet ahead of traditional sectors like construction, transportation and utilities.

The report also performs cross-country comparisons among most OECD countries ranking them according to a composite "BCG-Intensity index" in which Greece comes last among 28 countries in terms of the overall economic significance of the internet.

The BCG-Intensity Index looks at three measures:

• Enablement: Looks at infrastructure and access, where Greece is 25th in the list.
• Expenditure: Looks at how much consumers and businesses spend in e-commerce and online advertising, where Greece is last in the table.
• Engagement: Looks at how actively businesses, governments and consumers embrace the internet, where Greece also comes last.

Now, this is obviously a worrying picture but with some useful implications for policy since it obviously shows that the economy cannot capitalize even on the existing infrastructure which is in itself lagging.
It means that our national priority should be on the "adoption" front, creating a more conducive environment for internet businesses and a continued effort to convince companies that the internet presents a whole new territory of business activity. And naturally we still need to do much more towards increasing penetration and usage among people.