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Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal in his budget speech for the fiscal year 2023-2024 gave an outline of the government's latest ambition of ‘Smart Bangladesh.’
And so, he proposed an increased allocation of Tk 2,368 crore for the information technology sector for the next FY24. The allocation in this sector was Tk 1,916 crore in FY23, meaning the minister proposed over 23.5% increased allocation for the sector.
Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal said that they are confident enough to brace the challenges arising from the fourth industrial revolution and utilise its potential to be a developed country.
“Our current initiatives will play an effective role in creating a smart Bangladesh which will help realise the dream of building Bangladesh as a developed country by 2041,” said the minister in his budget speech on Thursday.
The minister is expecting that Smart Bangladesh will bring the per capita income to at least $12,500, less than 3% of people below the poverty line and extreme poverty reduced to zero.
He desired that the inflation will be limited to 4-5 per cent, the budget deficit will remain below 5 per cent of GDP, revenue-GDP ratio will be above 20 per cent and the investment will be 40 per cent of GDP.
According to the finance ministry sources, to achieve the ambitious goal, the master plan will include 40 new mega projects with deadlines for the implementation within 2025, 2031 and 2041, depending on short, medium and long-term projects.
Four pillars, foundation of the dream
AHM Mustafa Kamal believes that experience of implementing the digital Bangladesh agenda has laid the foundation for building a cost-effective, sustainable, innovative, intelligent and knowledge-based Smart Bangladesh.
“In the master plan, 100 per cent of applicable services will be digitised for the citizens. It will radically change people's lifestyle in all areas including education, livelihood, skills, medicine and industry,” he added.
The minister stated that the four pillars they decided as the foundation of Smart Bangladesh are smart citizen, smart society, smart government, and smart economy.
A ‘Smart Digital Leadership Academy’ has been established. Special allocation of Tk 100 crore has been proposed for research, innovation and development work to prepare the driving force, the youth and women, for building Smart Bangladesh.
The government wants to train 20,000 young women and 80,000 youths from different universities on advanced technology.
According to the minister, they want to ensure transparent and easy service delivery for the people and trade and investment facilities will be equally accessible to all under smart society, smart government and smart economy approaches.
Already rolling on way of envisaged vision
The minister proposed about taxes and subsidies at the import stage of the expansion and development of ICT sectors, and also for the growth and development of the sector.
The minister said that their effort started from schools, providing multimedia rooms to 50,000 government primary schools and providing training to over one lakh teachers.
The government is also planning to set up 64,925 multimedia classrooms and 12,000 labs. Some 710 ICT learning centres have already been set up in selected educational institutions.
The government has initiated to set up 109 Hi-Tech Parks and Bangladesh Hi-Tech Park Authority is determined to train up 60,680 people by 2025 and one lakh people by 2030.
The government has formed Equity and Entrepreneurship Fund (EEF) and later Entrepreneurship Support Fund (ESF) and 4,825 expressions of interest (EOI) have already been received until February 2023. So far, 104 projects have been sanctioned and funds for 11 projects totaling Tk 13.58 Crore have been released, the minister informed.
In an attempt to protect local manufacturers of computer, cellphone and its parts, the government has extended the application period of SRO-127, issued in 2021, to June 2024, so that the local importers can have subsidies on importing materials.
Kamal also proposed to include certain raw materials and amend the description of some HS codes to provide more support to the local computer and computer goods manufacturing industry.
Besides, the finance minister has proposed the extension of existing VAT exemption facility for production of computer products till June 30, 2024.
The minister also mentioned that their attempt to set up a digital bank will become a reality within FY24.
He also discussed how the government is working on digital land management to achieve the goal of Smart Bangladesh.
