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BD emerges as robot exporting country, says minister

FE Report | October 15, 2019 00:00:00


Bangladesh has emerged as a robot exporting country and it exported 12 robots to South Korea last year, Foreign Minister Dr AKM Abdul Momen said on Monday.

He was addressing the inaugural ceremony of the Digital Device and Innovation Expo 2019 titled 'Made in Bangladesh'.

He said that major mobile handset selling companies will start assembling handsets here instead of importing those from abroad.

Bangladesh is now a fastest growing country among the 45 Asia-pacific countries, the minister said, adding that Vision 2021 and digital Bangladesh is now no more a dream, but a reality.

"Bangladesh now has 162.6 million mobile users and 98.3 million internet users," he said. The ICT sector has grown by 20 times, he says quoting an UNCTAD report.

After March, Samsung will not import handsets as they will assemble those in their plant in Bangladesh, the minister said.

State minister for the ICT Junaid Ahmed Palak said that every year 40 million mobile sets are being imported to Bangladesh. In the last 10 years, 100 million mobile sets were sold in Bangladesh - of which symphony alone sold 80 million, he mentioned.

He disclosed that Symphony will also stop importing mobile handsets and will meet the local demand from their plant in Bangladesh.

He said that local companies are also engaged in manufacturing laptop computers and

Walton manufactured 5.0 million laptops till 2019 from 2017.

The import duties on 84 spare parts for mobile phones and 79 items for laptops have been slashed to only one per cent. He said that Bangladesh will host the world digital expo in 2021.

Among others, N M Zeaul Alam, senior secretary of the ICT ministry, AKM Rahmatullah MP, chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on ministry of the post, telecommunications and ICT, and Hosne Ara Begum, MD of the Bangladesh High Tech Park were also present at the function.

Addressing the function as the guest of honour, Dr James Poisant, Secretary General of the World Information Technology and Service Alliance (WITSA) said Bangladesh has become a leading country in digital innovations.

Bridging the innovators with the entrepreneurs is the main objective of this Expo.

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