Prime Minister’s ICT Affairs Adviser Sajeeb Wazed Joy expressed his optimism that the export of country’s IT and technology sector will exceed earnings from garments sector within a very short time as the sector is growing very rapidly.

“Today on the record officially, Bangladesh’s IT export exceed $1 billion. . . I believe within a very short time, we will cross our garments export through technology export,” he told the inaugural ceremony of a three-day Digital Bangladesh Mela at BICC hall on Thursday (Jan 16).

However, he said, as most IT services are internet-based and exports are happening over the internet, it is impossible to track the true volume.

“We believe that there is at least another billion or two billion US dollars in export that is happening unofficially through the internet that is not being tracked. So, we are very well on our way to catch out garments industry in terms of our IT services” he said.

Joy also expressed his hope that the country will roll out 5-G technologies with the rest of the world.

Chaired by Posts and Telecommunications Minister Mustafa Jabbar, the function was addressed by Chairman of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Posts, Telecommunication and Information Technology AKM Rahmatullah, Huawei Technologies (Bangladesh) Ltd CEO Zhang Zhengjun and Posts and Telecommunications Secretary Nur-ur Rahman.