A mixed year for IT sector

The country has made considerable progress in information and communication technology (ICT), moving one step forward to the dream of Digital Bangladesh by 2021. Experts in the sector, however, said that the pace at which things were moving forward was not sufficient enough to achieve that digital dream.
Besides, insufficient budgetary allocation, unnecessary taxation and lack of capital incentive on exports of IT enabled services (ITES) remained unresolved, industry insiders asserted.
The one silver lining for the Digital Bangladesh initiative came at the beginning of October, with the government rolling out Smart National ID (NID) cards, aiming to distribute the cards to 100 million people.
These cards replaced the existing laminated cards used by the Election Commission. Many other functions like banking, passport details, driving licenses, trade licenses, tax payments and share trading are currently among the 22 services that can be accessed through the cards. Of course, more services are to follow.
The cards hold biometric details of the cardholder: impressions of all 10 fingers and images of the iris. In total, 32 types of unique citizen data will be “embedded” in its microchip.
In another achievement, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, information and communication technology adviser to the Prime Minister, was conferred the “ICT for Development Award, 2016” in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the people through implementation of the “Digital Bangladesh” initiative in September this year.
Introduced this year on the occasion of the 71st session of the UN General Assembly, the award will be given regularly on an annual basis. Joy was the first recipient of the award.
In another feather to its cap, Bangladesh has won the world’s most prestigious award for excellence in information technology—the “World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)” award— for the third consecutive year. This year, the country took the top honour for innovative initiatives of the Access to Information (a2i) Programme of the Prime Minister’s Office supported by UNDP & USAID. Four initiatives from the a2i Programme got championship certificates and the one initiative for women journalists from the Bangladesh NGO’s Network for Radio and Communication (BNNRC) got the winner's award.
Notwithstanding these achievements, experts in the sector believe that Bangladesh was performing far below its actual potential for leveraging ICT and fetching huge export earnings from it along with ensuring good governance through digitisation of the government itself.
In a near-term target, the government seeks to earn USD 1 billion from ICT exports by the year 2018, whereas the sector’s export earnings were a paltry USD 132.5 million during the last fiscal year with a total output of around USD 600 million.
In its Seventh Five Year Plan for 2016-2020, the government has set an even more ambitious target of raising domestic ICT earnings to USD 2 billion and export earnings to USD 2 billion. Creating one million IT professionals and spending more on research and development to secure 1 per cent contribution to the GDP from the ICT sector by 2020 are also on the cards.
Industry insiders said that to actualise this ambitious plan, the government has to double its budgetary allocation for the ICT sector and also create provisions for several cash incentive measures for the private sector. They still believe that Bangladesh has not been completely successful in creating a suitable business scenario for the ICT sector in 2016.
An example of that is Bangladesh in 2016 has fallen two ranks below in the global ICT Developments Index by securing the 145th position with a point of 2.35. Korea has secured the top spot with 8.84 points among 175 nations.
Among neighbouring countries, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, India, Myanmar and Nepal are better with rankings of 116, 117, 138, 140 and 142, respectively. Only Pakistan and Afghanistan, ranke 146th and 164th, respectively, are behind Bangladesh.
In Bangladesh, about 14.4 per cent of the population used the Internet and 2.4 per cent used fixed broadband, while broadband users counted for 13.5 per cent of the population in 2016.

 

A mixed year for IT sector

The country has made considerable progress in information and communication technology (ICT), moving one step forward to the dream of Digital Bangladesh by 2021. Experts in the sector, however, said that the pace at which things were moving forward was not sufficient enough to achieve that digital dream. Besides, insufficient budgetary allocation, unnecessary taxation and lack of capital incentive on exports of IT enabled services (ITES) remained unresolved, industry insiders asserted. The one silver lining for the Digital Bangladesh initiative came at the beginning of October, with the government rolling out Smart National ID (NID) cards, aiming to distribute the cards to 100 million people. These cards replaced the existing laminated cards used by the Election Commission. Many other functions like banking, passport details, driving licenses, trade licenses, tax payments and share trading are currently among the 22 services that can be accessed through the cards. Of course, more services are to follow. The cards hold biometric details of the cardholder: impressions of all 10 fingers and images of the iris. In total, 32 types of unique citizen data will be embedded in its microchip. In another achievement, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, information and communication technology adviser to the Prime Minister, was conferred the ICT for Development Award, 2016 in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the people through implementation of the Digital Bangladesh initiative in September this year. Introduced this year on the occasion of the 71st session of the UN General Assembly, the award will be given regularly on an annual basis. Joy was the first recipient of the award. In another feather to its cap, Bangladesh has won the worlds most prestigious award for excellence in information technologythe World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) award for the third consecutive year. This year, the country took the top honour for innovative initiatives of the Access to Information (a2i) Programme of the Prime Ministers Office supported by UNDP USAID. Four initiatives from the a2i Programme got championship certificates and the one initiative for women journalists from the Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication (BNNRC) got the winners award. Notwithstanding these achievements, experts in the sector believe that Bangladesh was performing far below its actual potential for leveraging ICT and fetching huge export earnings from it along with ensuring good governance through digitisation of the government itself. In a near-term target, the government seeks to earn USD 1 billion from ICT exports by the year 2018, whereas the sectors export earnings were a paltry USD 132.5 million during the last fiscal year with a total output of around USD 600 million. In its Seventh Five Year Plan for 2016-2020, the government has set an even more ambitious target of raising domestic ICT earnings to USD 2 billion and export earnings to USD 2 billion. Creating one million IT professionals and spending more on research and development to secure 1 per cent contribution to the GDP from the ICT sector by 2020 are also on the cards. Industry insiders said that to actualise this ambitious plan, the government has to double its budgetary allocation for the ICT sector and also create provisions for several cash incentive measures for the private sector. They still believe that Bangladesh has not been completely successful in creating a suitable business scenario for the ICT sector in 2016. An example of that is Bangladesh in 2016 has fallen two ranks below in the global ICT Developments Index by securing the 145th position with a point of 2.35. Korea has secured the top spot with 8.84 points among 175 nations. Among neighbouring countries, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, India, Myanmar and Nepal are better with rankings of 116, 117, 138, 140 and 142, respectively. Only Pakistan and Afghanistan, ranke 146th and 164th, respectively, are behind Bangladesh. In Bangladesh, about 14.4 per cent of the population used the Internet and 2.4 per cent used fixed broadband, while broadband users counted for 13.5 per cent of the population in 2016.