The cabinet committee on public purchase yesterday approved “Development of ICT Infra-Network for Bangladesh Government Phase-III (Info-Sarkar Phase-3).”
Under the project, the government will provide optical fibre connections to up to 1,200 union parishads across the country.
A total of 171 video conference systems, 554 business process outsourcing (BPO), pilot-based cloud platform, increased capacity of the existing network management system, setting up of network equipment and establishing help desk will be needed on an urgent basis to expedite the ICT infra-network project.
Chinese Exim Bank will provide loan worth $167m under a government to government arrangement, official sources said.
The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Division has undertaken the project with an aim to give all the Union Information Service Centres (UISC) an institutional shape.
The proposed loan would be used to procure all the necessary products, infrastructural eqipment and services from the Chinese state-owned firm M/S China Railway International Group Company Limited (CRIG) through a direct purchase method, according to a summary of the report of the cabinet committee on economic affairs. The Chinese government has already nominated the CRIG to implement the project.
The incumbent Awami League-led government announced “Vision 2021” in its election manifesto as a political commitment as part of its bid to build “Digital Bangladesh.”
