ICT State Minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak expressed his determination to build a smart Bangladesh by creating smart human resources and establishing a startup culture. He said that the government has created 2 million new jobs in the technology sector and created 1.5 million startups and created 650,000 freelancers in the last six years from labor dependence to technology dependence. 400 startups have received billions of dollars in foreign investment through this. And to continue this trend, policies and guidelines like AI, e-waste management and green circular economy have been created. Under the One Family One Seed initiative launched with the United Nations, 10 million new jobs have been created.
This was stated by the state minister in a high-level meeting after the publication of the study report published by the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) Development Center at a hotel in Gulshan on Tuesday. At the event, the OECD published a report on the review of the transformation policy of the production process. The report emphasizes the importance of innovation, up-skilling and capacity building to overcome low wages and production costs in the transition from low-income countries to developing countries.
In a presentation, Palak said that technology is influencing every level of life in today’s world, especially 70 percent. Manufacturing process is smart with data dependency. The annual growth in this figure has been 3.5 percent. Productivity increased by 30 percent and energy consumption decreased by 25 percent. The use of artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT will boost local productivity and technology-leading use of growth.
The state minister said that the country has 80 percent internet penetration by suggesting the statistics presented in the report. Now 13 crore people of the country are connected to the internet.
State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam said that the government is moving forward in multilateral partnership by emphasizing six issues in the transformation of the production process in the discussion moderated by OECD chief Annalisa Premi. He said, in this regard, the highest importance is being given to human development. Under the Prime Minister’s Office, emphasis has been placed on upscaling of migrants, formation of National Skill Council and skilled manpower suitable for young industries. Less educated people are being given importance in sectors like health, nursing. It is on that basis that infrastructure development and logistics and connectivity have been developed. Recently we talked about financing with the European Development Bank. 100 special investment zones like IT and hi-tech parks have been zoned through the partnership. We are now pursuing bilateral partnerships with India, Nepal and Bhutan on cross-border grid cooperation in energy and digital transformation.
Commerce Secretary Tapan Kanti Ghosh, Competition Commission Member Hafizur Rahman, FBCC I President Mahbubul Alam, Rapid Bangladesh Chairman Mohammad Abdur Razzak and UN Technology Bank Managing Director Taffere Tesfachew also spoke in the discussion.
