The survey which shows an overall growth of over 25 percent in all key sectors such as ownership, awareness and literacy, added that the overall literacy rate in the country has increased from 16.1 percent in 2006-2007 to 20.3 in 2009. Computer awareness too has gone up from 37.1 percent to 43.8 percent.

Computer awareness in the urban population has gone up to 60 percent in comparison to 47.4 percent recorded in 2006-07. The awareness of rural population too has gone up from 36.9 in 2006-07 to 43 percent in 2009, followed by the estate sector which has also grown to 15.8 from 10.3 in 2006-07.

Western province tops the table with 28 percent while the Eastern province is considered the least literate 4.9 percent. According to overall figures, males (22 percent) are slightly ahead of females (18.7 percent) in computer literacy.

Among the employed population, 40.6 percent are computer literate with senior managers enjoying a higher share of 85.9 percent.

According to the survey, 23.9 percent of urban population use Internet while in rural areas the figure is 11.1 percent and estate sector 9.2 percent. The Western province has the most number of Internet users with 19.2 percent and northwestern the least with 6.3 percent.

With President Mahinda Rajapaksa initiating large investments on English language and ICT development projects and formally declaring 2009 as the Year of English and Information Technology, the Department of Census and Statistics (DCS) was called to measure e–readiness of the public. Two surveys had been conducted on computer literacy in 2004 and 2006-07 and in 2009 the third.