World Bank, Bangladesh sign financing agreement for ICT project

The Bangladeshi government Monday signed a financing agreement with the World Bank worth 70 million U.S. dollars for an IT or information technology project aimed to create employment opportunities for thousands. The Leveraging ICT (Information Communication Technology) for Growth, Employment and Governance Project aims at creating an estimated 30,000 direct jobs in the IT and IT enabled service sectors, which have the potential to create up to 120,000 indirect jobs. The project is also expected to increase revenue by over 200 million U.S. dollars by the end of the initiative from IT and its related services, said the Washington-based lender in a statement. It said studies indicate that Bangladesh possesses significant comparative advantage in the IT and Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) industry due to the availability of a large English-educated talent pool and competitive labor costs. In addition, the industry possesses particular strengths in niche sub-segments, such as software programming, graphics and animation, it added. "The project would directly benefit 30,000 youth who will gain marketable and globally recognized IT and ITES skills. Among them, 9,000 will be women," said Ellen Goldstein, Country Director of World Bank Bangladesh. According to the statement, the project will also establish basic e-Government foundations, to support governance reforms and significantly improve the government's efficiency and effectiveness. Specifically, it said the proposed technology foundation will enable all ministries and agencies to host their systems and information on a shared data center. "Bangladesh needs targeted programs to develop Bangladesh's potential in the IT/ITES industry along with focus to build the necessary e-Government foundations," said Iqbal Mahmood, senior secretary of Bangladesh's Economic Relations Division.