CHINA’S BIG PLAN FOR BIG DATA

CHINA unveiled a development plan for the big data industry during the 14th Five-year Plan period (2021 to 2025), on Tuesday. The scale of the country’s big data industry would probably exceed 3 trillion yuan (about R7.5 trillion) by the end of 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of around 25 percent, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said. A market-oriented pricing mechanism for data as a key factor of production would be established by then, the MIIT said, adding that it would raise the social awareness of big data and incentivise advanced big data-powered products and services.