NEW DELHI: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman stated on Friday that internet connectivity in rural India is rapidly growing and will soon surpass that in urban areas.  In response to the Rajya Sabha's debate on the General Budget 2022-23, she stated that, according to a report by the Internet and Mobile Association, the rural internet user base is expanding three times faster than the urban user base and would soon overtake the urban user base.

"In June 2021, data consumption through Bharatnet optical fibre exceeded 13,000 terabytes, while the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) reported in August 2021 that the overall number of internet subscribers had increased to 82.5 crore," she stated.

Sitharaman also stated that the contracts for laying optical fibre links in rural and isolated areas, which she mentioned in the Budget, will be given this year and finished by 2025.

In response to the Opposition's claim that Bangladesh is growing faster than India, she told the House that India's GDP is ten times larger than Bangladesh's, so even if Bangladesh expanded at 10% and India only grew at 1%, the absolute growth rate would be the same. "To say Bangladesh is expanding at 5.5 percent while we are growing at 4.1 percent is not quite accurate in terms of growth rate," she explained.

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