Lanka’s Computer Literacy increases to 34.3%

Department of Census and Statistics -Computer Literacy Statistics 2021 Annual Bulletin survey results show an increase of 3.5 % points from 2019 to 2021 in Computer Literacy. Urban sector shows the highest computer literacy rate (49.0%) among residential sectors. Computer literacy rate for rural and estate sectors are 32.3 % and 13.9 % respectively, according to

Among the provinces the highest level of computer literacy is reported from the Western province (45.9%). The lowest computer literacy is reported from the North Central province (23.4%). Computer literacy among males (36.1%) is higher than that of females (32.6%) in 2021.Young youths (aged 15 –19 years) show the highest computer literacy rate (71.4%) among all other age groups.

In 2021, at least one computer is available in 22.9 of households in the country. That is more than one out of every five households owns either a desktop or a laptop computer.

This percentage is 38.3 in urban sector and rural and estate sector show 20.7 % and 4.1 % respectively, When the provinces are considered the highest availability is in the Western province (36.5%) while the lowest availability is reported from the Eastern (11.9%).

Percentage of availability of desktop or laptop computer at a household varies between 22% - 23% between 2019 to 2021 period.

Percentage of Computer Literate population (Computer Literacy) over the survey periods has been gradually increasing.

The survey results further reveal that higher the level of education, higher the computer literacy. The group with the A/L or above level of education shows the highest computer literacy rate (76.8%). Also, computer literacy is higher among those who are literate in English language (76.3%).

Computer literacy among the employed population who are aware of computer in Sri Lanka is around 66.3 % in 2021. The positions such as senior officials and Managers (86.0%), Professionals (93.4%), When digital literacy is considered 57.2% (aged 5 -69) has digital literacy. Digital literacy is higher than computer literacy for all disaggregated levels, showing the drift from Personal Computer to Smartphones and Tablets. Over 44.5 % of the population aged 5 to 69 years uses the internet facility at least once during twelve months in 2021.

The survey results reveal that 17.8 % of the household population aged 5 – 69 years use E–mail facility at least once during the last 12 month period in 2021.