DHAKA, June 7, 2018 (BSS) – Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith today
gave hints of increasing dependency on ICT in the coming days, saying, this
will push up productivity in the country.
“Wider and multifaceted use of ICT under the banner of ‘Digital
Bangladesh’ is supporting us in taking forward our agenda for reducing
poverty and ensuring social mobility. To sustain the trend of higher growth
in coming days the contribution of industrial sector to GDP will have to be
increased which call for stronger focus on increasing productivity,” he said
while placing the proposed budget for 2018-19 fiscal at the Jatiya Sangsad
today.
Muhith, who was placing his 10th budget in the House, said, a strong
infrastructural base for ICT has already been set up at the grassroots level
of the country.
“We still continue to put in place new infrastructure and facilitate
programme for extension of internet services to cope with the increasing
demand. Some of the notable programmes include provision of 4.408GBPS
bandwidth from 6 divisions to Dhaka, 5.928 GBPS bandwidth from districts to
divisions and establishment of wireless broadband network (4G, LTE),” he
added.
The finance minister further said steps have been taken to monitor cyber
space and internet based cyber-crime to avert security risk of ICT
infrastructure spread across the country, prevent such crime while ensuring
all kinds of information/security.
“We are going to establish ‘Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development
Academy’ with a view to putting in place institutional framework for
encouraging youths to come forward to innovate new technology and take new
initiative and building their capacity, branding and marketing of their
products, as well as production of intellectual property rights,” he said.
“This will play an effective role in developing creative entrepreneurship
and building small and medium enterprises while creating employment
opportunities,” Muhith added.