Bangladesh is a contry which is full of natural wealth ,only need to develop the infrustucture .

The Bangladesh Government is seeking international bids for a number of big-ticket infrastructure projects, which could collectively be valued at around $8 to $10 billion.

These include an eight-lane express highway between Dhaka, the country’s political capital, and Chittagong — the commercial capital and the main trade gateway.

“This could be worth anywhere from $3 billion to $4 billion,” Abul Maal Abdul Muhith, Bangladesh’s Fin-ance Minister told Gulf News in an interview.

Besides, tenders for a large deep-sea port will be invited soon, which could help the economies of India’s seven landlocked states and the two Himalayan states of Nepal and Bhutan.

“But, we have made substantial progress in finalizing the plans to build the largest bridge — over the river Padma,” he said. “This could cost potentially $2.6 to $2.8 billion. Bids will be invited in a few months.”

The deep-sea port project will be carried out in two phases with the first having seven jetties and the second phase could see nine. This would be the South Asian country’s first sea port, although Chittagong and Mongla ports serve as gateways to its economy.

Dubai’s DP World has expressed an interest in Chittagong Port and subsequent development of the sea port.

Muhith welcomed their intention.

“We welcome bids by the UAE companies. These will be international competitive bids and we will choose the winner on the basis of the merits and pricing.

The country is also fin-alising a public-private partnership for physical infrastructure projects, where foreign developers and contractors could build, operate and transfer roads, highways, bridges, etc. The government could allow them to collect tolls that will help these investors get solid returns.

Power and energy

In addition to this, Bangladesh is seeking massive investment in energy and power sector. The entire country has been divided into 22 energy blocks for exploration of oil and gas.

Bangladesh is known to be gas-rich and power-hungry as it requires massive power supply for economic growth.

Muhith, a long-time bureaucrat and economist-turned-politician, is spearheading the country’s economic growth engine that had remained stagnant for some time.

His government came to power last January with a massive mandate, winning 263 seats in a 300-member legislature with a promise to deliver 3,000 to 4,000 megawatts of power.

“We have already added 900 MW power to the national grid so far,” he said.

“We sought bids for additional 900 megawatt power on rental. However, we have received bids four times higher. Once the pricing is finalized, we could award tenders and the country could see additional 700 MW added to the grid.

Tenders

“However, in 2010-11, we are going to float tenders for large power plants — 350 to 500 MW each to raise power output by a few thousand megawatts by 2014,” he said.

“The Bangladesh economy is looking up as we have managed to reduce the impact of the global economic crisis by supporting the local agricultural sector through subsidies and by offering agricultural inputs at a cheaper price and in time to the farmers. As a result, the country has witnessed bumper crops during the first two production seasons.”

As the economic prospects look up, so are investment prospects in the country, he said.

Muhith earlier tabled a record budget with the highest domestic investment in the country’s 38-year history that has been greeted by economists as ambitious.

The government has already spent 10 per cent of the annual development programme in four months or 22 per cent of the country’s revenue – to spur domestic consumption and growth — a move that could see an upturn in economy.

The world is becoming a Digital Planet. Almost every state is running to become a knowledge based society by 2015. Bangladesh can not remain out of it. We must build a Digital Bangladesh and establish a knowledge based society within 50 years of our independence in 2021. Lets work for this achievement. Lets build Digital Bangladesh.Digital Bangladesh
The world is becoming a Digital Planet. Almost every state is running to become a knowledge based society by 2015. Bangladesh can not remain out of it. We must build a Digital Bangladesh and establish a knowledge based society within 50 years of our independence in 2021. Lets work for this achievement. Lets build Digital Bangladesh.
Promised digital Bangladesh and the young generation Md. Anwarul Kabir
The honeymoon period for the newly installed Government led by Awami League is yet to over. The landslide victory of Awami League in the last election has given the new government of Sheikh Hasina an enormous task of meeting people’s aspirations. Different analyses of the electoral results have revealed that the young generation who consist of more than one third of the voters had indeed brought this overwhelming victory for AL. With many other reasons, implicitly it can be inferred that voters of this generation while exercising their franchise considered party manifestos seriously. Presumably the visionary approach of AL’s manifesto, entitled ‘a charter for change’ might have allured the young voters much, especially its ‘Vision 2021? which envisions a ‘digital Bangladesh’.

Let us now explore the buzzword digital Bangladesh. What does it really mean? Moving towards digital Bangladesh does not imply that the urban young groups of the country will be more sophisticated consumers of high-tech devices like computers, digital cameras, latest model mobile sets or camcorders etc. based on high-speed Internet infrastructure and promote the dejuice culture. Rather discarding this superficial notion, we need to consider the term ‘digital Bangladesh’ objectively.

Broadly speaking, a digital society ensures an ICT driven knowledge-based society where information will be readily available on line and where all possible tasks of the government, semi-government and also private spheres will be processed using the state of the art technology. So, a digital Bangladesh must guarantee efficient and effective use of modern ICT in all spheres of the society with a view to establishing good governance. In other word, making Bangladesh a digital one, we have to establish technology driven e-governance, e-commerce, e-production, e-agriculture, e-health etc. in the society emphasizing the overall development of the common people, the major stakeholders of the country.

Due to globalization, more specifically due to booming of ICT like most of the countries on the globe, Bangladesh has already been connected with the outside world. Yet in the field of ICT, our only grand success lies in Mobile telecommunication which has brought an abrupt change in telecommunication scenario of the country. However, in the other spheres of ICT, our achievement is very insignificant and we are still far away from transforming ourselves into a knowledge-based society.

Building strong ICT infrastructure is the pre-requisite for making Bangladesh a digital one. For this, we need to focus on the following relevant issues assessing the harsh reality that hinders our development in this context.

a) Power deficit: Latest statistics reveal that Bangladesh faces a power deficit of up to 2000 MW against a demand of 5000 MW daily. It may be noted that for proper ICT development an uninterrupted power supply is a must.

b) Network infrastructure: Outside Dhaka, at present a few computer network infrastructures have been developed so far. Apart from some educational institutes outside Dhaka, observation finds that most of the LAN setups are Dhaka centric. This observation reveals the reality of the digital gap even within the country.

c) Use of Internet: For the ICT development Internet users of the country must be increased. In this case our position is the worst one among the South Asian countries. The latest statistics (ITU, 2007) revealed that Internet penetration in our country is only 0.3%. Whereas, in Pakistan and India, it is 7.3% and 5.3% respectively.

d) Under sea submarine cable: Since 2006, Bangladesh has been connected to worldwide Internet Super High Way through an under sea submarine cable. But this single submarine cable frequently faces disruption resulting in slow bandwidth.

e) Network Readiness: Networked Readiness Index (NRI), developed by the University of Harvard, measures the propensity for countries to exploit the opportunities offered by information and communications technology. The NRI seeks to better comprehend the impact of ICT on the competitiveness of nations. The NRI is a composite of three components: the environment for ICT offered by a given country or community, the readiness of the community’s key stakeholders (individuals, businesses, and governments) to use ICT, and finally the usage of ICT amongst these stakeholders. Unfortunately, the latest survey (2006-7) revealed that Bangladesh’s NRI ranking is one of the lowest among the Asian countries.

f) Use of open source software: Many countries (e.g. France and Malaysia) have started to use open source software in ICT development projects for cost effectiveness. Unfortunately, in our ICT development domain the culture of using open source has not yet been introduced.

g) English literacy rate: From different sources, it has been learnt that, English literacy rate in Bangladesh is less than one percent. Whereas, English literacy rates in India and Pakistan are 60% and 20% respectively. There is a strong correlation between English literacy and ICT development in the present context of globalization. In the arena of ICT English has become the Lingua-Franca. On the other hand, we have not localized Bengali in the domain of computing. Hence, English literacy is a must for our ICT development. Unfortunately, in this case our position is the worst in the sub-continent.

Though the above accounts seem to be frustrating one, these can be easily overcome within a reasonable span of time if we can establish good governance in the country. Since independence, Bangladesh has been critically suffering from poor governance. Lack of vision, corruption, lack of transparency, weak coordination, undemocratic decision making were the salient features of our past governments. These can also be marked as the major barrier to the overall progress of Bangladesh. However, the newly installed government which has called for changes, hopefully, will establish much expected good governance to keep up with people’s aspiration.

For making a digital Bangladesh by 2021, the government must address the above stated issues effectively and efficiently in transparent manners. In many cases we need to reformulate our national policy (e.g. education policy, ICT policy) in accordance with the Millennium Development Goals. In reformulating the ICT policy, we will need to take a pragmatic and visionary approach so that it can curb the prevailing digital gap in the society. Moreover, the journey towards a digital Bangladesh needs the incorporation of the technologically solvent innovative younger generation. If the leaders of our country objectively guide this generation, they can do wonder for the nation. After all, the young generation always looks forward and they can help bring about positive changes in the society.

All new bank notes and coins to be circulated soon in the country will hold the portrait of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

The Bangladesh bank is going to apply portrait of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mijubur Rahman in all bank notes and coins with the new design by next year.

“Our board of directors has already decided to use Bangabandhu portrait in all bank notes and coins by 2010,” said a senior official of the Bangladesh Bank (BB), the country’s central bank.

He also said the central bank has sent a proposal to the finance ministry in this connection for approval.

The central bank disclosure coincided with final judgment in Bangabandhu murder case by the Supreme Court on Thursday upholding death penalties of 12 ex-army officers given by the High Court.

“The new designs of bank notes and coins have almost been finalized and sent to the authorities concerned for approval,” another BB official said, adding that the central bank will issue work orders to the Security Printing Corporation for taking necessary measures in this connection.

The Bangladesh Bank Governor said every country in the world, including India, the UK and the USA, honoured their respective father of the nation and great leaders by carrying their portraits in currency notes and coins.

“We’re unfortunate not to have the portrait of Bangabandhu on all our notes and coins,” he added.

Dr Atiur said the primary preparations to carry the portrait of Bangabandhu on all our new notes and coins were in progress while a group of note designers, led by eminent artist and designer of many notes and coins of the country, Kayum Chowdhury, was busy designing the notes and coins.

“We’ll go for printing the new notes and coins as soon as the Finance Ministry approves the proposal in this regard,” he said.

He said the existing notes having the portrait of Bangabandhu and the other  notes would also remain in circulation.

Meanwhile, the central bank has issued two new notes of Tk 100 and Tk 500 denominations carrying the portrait of Bangabandhu.

The notes were printed as per the previous designs having the portrait but with the signature of the new Bangladesh Bank Governor, Dr Atiur Rahman.

How ever- What ever U S A relation is important for our reality and determinining overcome our strategy of growing as a dignified nation.
United States Ambassador in Bangladesh James F Moriarty has called for greater cooperation between Bangladesh and the USA in the fields of knowledge to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
“Against the backdrop of a challenging time for the world scenario; Bangladesh-US relationship has successfully retained its solid ground,” Moriarty said in the city Saturday.

“However, greater cooperation in the fields of knowledge and sharing of ideas can assure a better future for both the countries during the remaining part of the 21st century,” US envoy added.

His views came while addressing an international conference on ‘Development: Tradition, Transition, Transformation” organised at a city hotel.

The Fulbright Association of Bangladesh (FAAB) – a forum Fulbright scholars in the country, organised the conference.

Speaking on the occasion, President of FAAB Hafiz G A Siddiqi said: “Fulbright scholars can contribute immensely to the socio economic development of Bangladesh. However, capacity building is required to properly utilise their knowledge and ideas”.

Fulbright Regional Research Scholar in Bangladesh David Ludden, who presented the keynote speech of the programme, focused on the spatial inequity in Bangladesh as well as in South Asia.

“Spatial inequality begins with spatial inequity”, Ludden, who is a professor of Political Economy and Globalisation at New York University, said.

“The richer section of the society grows at the expense of the poorer segment, both in Bangladesh and around the world, often not knowing that they are doing so,” he added.

He also explained the origin of spatial inequality in Bangladesh in a historical context.