Tapan Kanti Ghosh, the senior secretary of the Ministry of Commerce, expressed concern that instead of meeting the demand of foreign countries, the country may need to bring skilled people in high technology sectors from abroad. He said, seven lakh IT experts are needed in European Union countries. It may reach as ten lakhs after a few years. But due to lack of skills we are unable to send skilled manpower. The commerce secretary also fears that in the future, we have to bring skilled human resources from abroad to meet the high technology sectors if we don’t develop skilled manpower.
He said, I researched on Google that India exported $320 billion worth of software last year. But we are still stuck at $1 billion. Indian IT experts are easily getting jobs in big IT companies in EU.
On Tuesday (January 2), the top trade organization of the country, The Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI), organized the workshop titled ‘Building a Resilient Economy for Vision 2041: What Challenges and Way Forward’, Tapan Kanti Ghosh expressed his concern about the issue. Similarly, mentioning the need to increase the quality of education, National Board of Revenue member Masood Sadiq said, experts of a neighboring country remits $5 billion from Bangladesh every year, whereas, the youth of our country are not getting jobs after completing their studies. For this, output based education should be ensured. The quality of education should be increased.
The alternate executive director of the World Bank and the former chief secretary of the Prime Minister Dr. Ahmad Kaykaus attended the workshop as the chief guest. Referring to the various developments in Bangladesh in the past years, he said, “We have a big market, we have capacity, we have come so far today despite many complications.” He highlighted the progress of Bangladesh and showed the app of the Election Commission on his mobile phone. “I don’t think robots will make us unemployed,” he said. The world cannot exist without humans. We have 17 crore people. So, we have to expand our horizon. Businessmen should find opportunities by removing barriers.
On the other hand, former BASIS president Syed Almas Kabir stressed on a national strategy on building a knowledge-based economy. Formulating the right policies for OBE (Output-Based Education) and upskilling & reskilling the existing workforce are imperative to create ‘Knowledge Workers’ who will tackle the challenges of the advent of 4IR through AI & robotization in the industries. A new law for the Knowledge Workers (in lieu of the existing labour law) is needed to ensure the rights of such intellectual labours.
He further aded, bilateral Treaties with trade partner countries can boost export. However, we must be diligent about such agreements (FTA, PTA, etc.) considering the immediate loss of revenue through customs duty, but also thinking about long-term benefits, especially after the LDC graduation in 2026.
As a presiding speaker, FBCCI President Mahbubul Alam also stressed on the coordinated efforts of the public and private sectors to organize the economic and commercial sectors to achieve a resilient economy as per Vision 2041 and all financial institutions to work together to manage financial activities in a smart manner.
Meanwhile, Mashroor Riaz, Policy Exchange Chairman and panel advisor of FBCCI presented the main article in the workshop. Emphasizing the digital economy in the presentation, he said that in the next decade, 3 billion more people and 500 billion devices will be connected to the Internet. Now this sector is growing at the rate of two and a half percent. In the future, 70 percent of the new value added in the economy will be from the digital sector. In terms of technology and market access, FDI should now be given utmost importance. In this case, the Regulatory Impact Assessment should be made mandatory. Besides, the new Companies Act needs to be implemented to implement the Intellectual Property Act for the digital economy. Logistics costs must be reduced in competitive global trade.
Besides, Foreign Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICI) President Javed Akhtar, Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI) President Kamran T Rahman Rahman and others participated in the panel discussion. In the workshop, the senior vice-president of FBCCI said. Amin Helali, vice president. Munir Hossain, director and e-cab president Shamiya Kaiser, along with business leaders from various sectors, high-ranking officials of the government were present.
Among them, BILD representative KM Shahidul Islam stressed the importance of using technology to prevent under-invoice manipulation of imports and exports. He said, we are apparently lagging behind Nepal in adopting technology. This is because we levy a 58.68 percent tax on the operating system itself, even though there is a ban on taxing electronics transaction trade in violation of WTO law. Over estimation of project implementation should be stopped.