The government is giving utmost importance to digital inclusion to boost the rural economy. State Minister for Information and Communication Technology Zunaid Ahmed Palak has said that by 2025, every inch of land in the country will be connected to broadband internet to connect the widest part of the economy to the mainstream economy.
The state minister further said that telehealth development in the country was 300% during the Covid-19 pandemic. During this time, 13,000 community health clinics have been set up to provide video conferencing, test report sharing, and specialist services. 98 percent of them are connected to mobile.
Palak also said that an initiative has been taken to create two lakh fiber optic connectivity points to streamline education, health, institutes and government offices through the Establishing Digital Connectivity Project to bridge rural-urban disparities and distances.
He said 300 ‘schools of the future’ were being set up across the country so that the new generation could easily get acquainted with frontier technologies like AR, VR, robotics, IoT and blockchain technology.
Citing Financial Express, the state minister further said that there are more than six and a half lakh IT freelancers in Bangladesh, the world’s second largest freelancing community, earning more than US $500 million a year. More than one crore 10 lakh transactions were made from more than 10 crore 30 lakh accounts. The revenue from about 2000 e-commerce sites is 200 million US dollars.
In his speech, State Minister for ICT Zunaid Ahmed Palak pledged to successfully implement the Broadband Equity and Connecting Citizens for Development and Living No Business Behind Pilot project in South Asia with the help of relevant UN departments.
On Tuesday (November 16), the United Nations Department of Economics and Social Context (DES) and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) jointly organized the Frontier Technology Policy Experimentation and Regulatory Pollution.
The Minister of Digital Innovation and Aerospace Industry in Tajikistan Mr. State Minister for Climate and Climate Change Technology Mohammed Sharif spoke from Baghdad Muslim and Maldives.
A2I Policy Adviser Anir Chowdhury, BTRC Vice Chairman Subrata Kumar Maitra officiated at the function hosted by ESCAP Representative Fijiana Bonapes.
