Speakers at a webinar on Thursday opined that if all economic activities are digitalized, transaction would be faster-reliable and cost of doing business will decrease. Informal and hidden economy would be transformed into formal while gray and black economy turn into transparent one.
They said now Bangladesh is evolving with enormous economic potentialities. It has maintained an average growth rate of 8% over last few years– well above the Asian average. This is because the economy has been turning to industrialized digital economy where everything is connected digitally.
The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh (ICAB) organised the webinar on ‘Economics of Digital Payment System for Growth: Comparative Practices and the Bangladesh Narratives’.
Experts also claimed that by digitizing revenue collection and expenditure payment with a real time settlement would result in increase of revenue, reduce transaction cost and other costs, would increase annual revenue minimum four times from the analog and paper-based collection system.
Post, Telecommunication & Information Technology Minister Mustafa Jabbar joined the event as the chief guest while ICAB President Md. Shahadat Hossain FCA delivered address of welcome.
Professor Mustafizur Rahman, Distinguished Fellow, Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) and Khondkar Atique-e- Rabbani FCA, Member – ICAB & Managing Director, The Computers Ltd joined as panel speakers.
ICAB Past President A. K. Gulam Kibria FCA was the session chairman while Dr. Jamaluddin Ahmed FCA, Past President-ICAB presented the keynote paper. ICAB Vice Presidents NKA Mobin FCA gave concluding remarks. ICAB President Md. Shahadat Hossain said, the contribution of IT industry to the ongoing economic growth of Bangladesh is getting bigger day by day. Citing a report he said, Bangladesh exports nearly $1 billion of technology products every year – a figure that the government expects to increase to $5 billion. The country also has 600,000 IT freelancers, he said adding, e-commerce is just booming; young talents are preferring doing start-up business, online shops, etc.
Keynote speaker Dr. Jamaluddin Ahmed FCA in his paper said, adoption of digital technology causes the changes to economic behavior and the costs of doing business which is shifting downwards as digital technology evolves in processing and running billions of economic transactions.
The payment system of a country entails the transfer of value from one to the other economic agent. As the economic activity grew following agriculture and industrial advances, increasing payments needed to be made over greater distances, and so both volumes and values of interbank obligations increased, he said.
Bangladesh is approaching to higher economic growth through digitalization in economic management process. ICT is identified an important driver for the growth. The journey of the country was started in 1964 first by installing a computer center and now has come a long way, the keynote presenter cited.
