Speakers at a conference on Saturday observed that achieving a trillion-dollar-plus economy it requires all stakeholders to work together to address the issues and making necessary policy reforms..
They have come up with a number of recommendations for policy reformations in the areas like ensuring quality education and setting up of technical schools, ensuring digital education, development of IT instrastructure, setting-up of bonded warehouse, new employment creation, establishment of export potential industries, digitization of tax administration, increase of exports and remittances, paperless office and big data protection, increase of foreign direct investment, innovative economy, etc.
They also demanded that to float Bonds for various large infrastructure projects so that the pressure of foreign exchange on financing such projects is not felt and thus foreign exchange is released for private sector growth.
The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh (ICAB) organized the Conference on “Chartered Accountants’ Role in Achieving Smart Bangladesh by 2041” at Hotel Sheraton Dhaka.
Md. Abul Kalam Azad, Special Envoy, Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) Presidency attended the occasion as the Chief Guest and Kamal Quadir, Chief Executive Officer, bKash graced as the Special Guest.
ICAB President Md. Moniruzzaman FCA, Vice President MBM Lutful Hadee FCA and ICAB Chief Executive Officer Shubhashish Bose, spoke on the occasion while Md. Humayun Kabir FCA, ICAB Council Member, Past President and Chairman, Organising Committee, celebration of 50th Anniversary (Golden Jubilee) of ICAB moderated entire the technical sessions.
Bangladesh goal by 2041 each of the above four components; Smart government, Smart citizens. Smart economy and Smart society- shall move together in synchronized manner so that it become an inclusive growth towards prosperity, they said.
Speakers said, Smart Bangladesh is a holistic concept and hence it will be myopic to define it only within digital space.
While many aspects of four components focus on digital transformation like 100% digital access for citizen, 100% paperless government, digital tolerance for society and ICT industry acceleration for economy, but there are many other underlying factors in each of these four components which require extensive input.
Widespread automation and digitization mean that the current paper based process would not exist, the need for face to face interaction would not be required, the current focus on how things are done would change to understanding the implications and insights to make forward looking decisions, they said.
Various policy reforms require to take place to facilitate the journey towards achieving the Trillion Dollar plus GDP target.
The reforms are needed in the areas of taxation, FDIs, education system, cybersecurity, data sharing, exports diversification, simplification of various government processes to improve Ease of Doing Business metrics, experts suggested.