Speakers at a roundtable have urged the government to formulate an ICT- friendly budget for the coming fiscal year. NeoSTAR Alliance organised the discussion on 'ICT budget' at BRAC Inn in Dhaka on Friday, according to a press release.
The discussion, with Governor of Bangladesh Bank Atiur Rahman in the chair, was to accumulate feedback of all stakeholders of the ICT industry and convey it to the government to prepare an ICT positive budget to spur growth of the hi-tech industry.
"The present government has identified ICT as one of the major thrust sectors for rapid economic development, unemployment and poverty alleviation. As part of it, the government has made ample allocations for ICT in the national budget and has already met the target set for FY 2009-10," said Atiur Rahman.
Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Posts and Telecommunications Ministry Hasanul Haq Inu MP was present as special guest.
Underscoring the necessity to provide proper incentives for the ICT sector, Inu said, "When more people come under the telecommunication service it will create a positive impact on our entire economic system. We can revisit the existing tax structure to make the telecom and IT services affordable to all. A further reduction of bandwidth cost is also an important consideration."
"We also need to focus on effective content development in order to make internet more usable and at the same time utilise the existing capacity of submarine cable. We also need a roadmap for the synchronisation of all processes in order to implement Digital Bangladesh,” he added.
IT industry leaders, activists, academicians and journalists also participated in the roundtable. Huawei Technologies (Bangladesh) Ltd, Augere Wireless Broadband Bangladesh Ltd, BRAC Net, BDCOM Online Ltd, Fiber@Home and E-generation were the event partners.
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