Joy expects ICT exports to soon exceed RMG earnings

Prime Minister’s ICT Affairs Adviser Sajeeb Wazed Joy predicted the ICT exports to exceed “within a short time” the amount earned by the readymade garments (RMG) sector, currently the highest foreign currency earner.

“Today on record officially, Bangladesh’s IT export exceeded US$1 billion . . . I believe within a very short time, we will cross our garments export through technology export,” he told the inaugural ceremony of a three-day Digital Bangladesh Fair at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre (BICC) hall in the capital on Thursday.

Joy, however, said it was difficult to assess the actual volume of ICT exports as most of the export-bound services in the sector were made through the internet.

“(But) we believe that there is at least another one or two billion US dollars in export that is happening through the internet that is not being tracked,” he said.

Joy added that the scenario reflected that the ICT sector was very well on its way to catch the garments industry as Bangladesh was exporting hardware as well that included mobile phones, televisions and smart devices and “the exports were growing very rapidly and exponentially”.

The PM’s adviser said some of the progresses in the sector could not been imagined even a decade ago when Bangladesh used to import all mobile phones.

He said once upon a time “we used to import 30 million mobile phones in a year (while) today 20 million of those mobile phones are produced in Bangladesh”.

Posts and Telecommunications Minister Mustafa Jabbar chaired the function also addressed by ministry’s parliamentary standing committee chairman AKM Rahmatullah, secretary Nur-ur Rahman and China-based Huawei Technologies (Bangladesh) Ltd CEO Zhang Zhengjun.

Joy said the mobile phone operators earlier could not launch 3-G or 4-G technologies in the country before because of the lack of technological supports like fiber optic backbone and user demands.

“Our Awami League government, the way we preceded to look at each problem, we thought if we have to make something a reality, we will have to find solutions to the problem and by solving the problem we could help the country progress,” he said.

Bangladesh then, he said, started producing analogue mobile phones to provide the device to people at low cost so everybody could afford to buy a mobile phone.

“We (then) started producing smart phones within Bangladesh. Because of 4-G you need smart phones and foreign smart phones were expensive,” Joy said adding that today Bangladesh was not only producing smart phones to meet the domestic demand but also exporting the devices to rest of the world including the United States of America (USA).

“It makes me very proud to learn that,” he added.

Source: BSS

AH