Mobile phones for productive purposes

Helping make more profits:

Sanjeevi JAYASURIYA

In Sri Lanka, mobile phone technology has assisted poor vegetable farmers to minimize costs in the value chain.

Prof Rohan Samarajiva

A recent study by LIRNEasia of some farmers near Dambulla found that they were able to obtain a premium of 23.4 percent on the average daily market prices at the Dambulla Dedicated Economic Centre by having access to timely and accurate market information via their mobile phones.

The mobile phone is becoming dominant in the ICT industry at Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP). In Sri Lanka Fifty two percent of the BOP knows how to operate a mobile phone. In India it is 32 percent, LIRNEasia Chair/Chief Executive Officer Prof Rohan Samarajiva said.

According to the UNCTAD Information Economy Report 2010 which launched yesterday focused on ICTs, enterprises and poverty alleviation, people who use mobile phones for productive purposes earn more.

Poor people often lack information that is critical for their work such as market prices, income earning opportunities, weather forecasts, agricultural best practices, health, finance, information on disaster risk reduction.

However, the rapid diffusion of mobile phone technology is enabling poor people to have access to the necessary information.

“The registration of SIM is necessary and the country needs to have a model similar to Pakistan where it maintains a centralized database,” he said.