Usage of mobile communications is a powerful economic growth engine, which governments can fuel by lowering taxes on mobile services and handsets, according to a new study undertaken by Deloitte for the GSM Association.
In a developing country, an increase of 10 percentage points in mobile penetration will lift that country’s annual economic growth rate by 1.2 percentage points, the study found. That represents a major uplift – if the proportion of people with a mobile phone in an economy, growing at 4% a year, rises from 10% to 20% that would boost the economic growth rate to 5.2% a year.