GAZIPUR, Oct 13, 2018 (BSS) – Inaugurating country’s fifth mobile phone assembling plant, Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology Minister Mustafa Jabbar has said ‘Made in Bangladesh’ is a national pride and outcome of the ‘digital Bangladesh’ campaign.
Local company Al Amin Brothers, which has been importing handsets for over two decades, set up the plant in Gazipur for own brand “5 Star Mobile” investing about Taka 30 crore.
Mustafa Jabbar opened the factory as the chief guest on Friday and it would initially assemble low-cost feature phones and gradually move towards smartphones, said a press release today.
He said local brands have attained the 70 percent share of country’s existing electronics market and those are being produced in Bangladesh. “This achievement is the outcome of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s digital Bangladesh.”
Mentioning the Prime Minister’s firm determination to produce and export digital device, Jabbar said now Bangladesh is exporting IoT products to Saudi Arabia while computer and laptop to Nepal and Nigeria.
He also urged the entrepreneurs to put concentration of maintaining quality strictly in producing electronic products. Though the plant has the capacity to assemble about four lakh handsets a month using five production lines, its initial monthly production target is about 1.5 lakh pieces.
Walton was the first company to take up assembling followed by Symphony, Samsung and Transsion Holdings. The five companies took licences from Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission right after the government offered huge tax benefits for mobile assembling in the 2017-18 budget.
Besides, a couple of interested companies have applied to the telecom regulator for licences and are preparing to set up plants.