State Minister for ICT Division Zunaid Ahmed Palak stressed the need for devising a solid strategy on unified brand platform to promote Bangladesh’s ICT sector in the international arena. “There must be a unified brand platform to promote Bangladesh’s ICT sector in the international arena. Different organizations have launched campaign separately to brand
Bangladesh through their own strategy, ” he said. Palak said this on Saturday while speaking as the chief guest at a workshop on Brand Bangladesh at a local hotel, also addressed, among others, by secretary of the ministry Shyam Sundar Sikder, executive director of Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC) SM Ashraful Islam and project director Rezaul Karim. A large number of foreign and local IT experts attended the function.
The state minister sought active cooperation from the Information Technology (IT) experts as well IT organizations to devise a unified brand strategy. “The government targets an increase in ICT export to at least US$ 1.0 billion by 2018 from the present US$ 250 million with a focus on Vission-2021 announced by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on December 12, 2008,” he said.
Palak said the government is setting up a Hi-Tech and Software Park side by side with expanding the connectivity up to the union level to materialize the Digital Bangladesh with the target to turn Bangladesh into a middle income country by 2021.
The state minister said the government has fixed a target to ensure ICT’s contribution to the economy by at least two percent by 2017, adding, “Bangladesh has entered into the demographic dividend since 2012 and over 65 percent of the total population is youth force.”
He said the government has stressed on using ICT for reaping benefits from the advantage of population dividend and around 7,50,000 IT professionals are working in the IT sector.
Referring to the 12.40 crore mobile phone users, Palak said the government has set up over 5,000 digital centres including 4,547 Union Digital Centres (UDCs) across the country, adding, “The government is making its service into e- services and it has already digitized 100 services to ensure people’s easy access to it.”
The state minister, however, said the software export saw a robust growth during the last few years with increasing its export to US$ 124.72 million in 2013-2014 fiscal year. The US, UK, Canada, Japan, Australia and Europe are the major importers of Bangladesh’s software products, he said.
