Developmental challenges derail Bangladesh’s ICT performance

Bangladesh performs very weakly at 24th place to surpass only bottom-ranked Pakistan on the Connectivity Scorecard 2010. The country’s low literacy levels and poor results on most human development indices are reflected in its weak consumer usage and skills scores. Bangladesh does not perform well in business infrastructure either, where it reports personal computer (PC) penetration and internet subscription levels Which are below-par.

The country’s good mobile telephony coverage and growth is the silver lining to its very poor performance. Here, Bangladesh outperforms several of its peers, including India and Nigeria. The country, one of the fastest-growing telecom markets in Asia, is now preparing to usher in Third Generation (3G) telecom services, which will lead to more affordable broadband services for users. Bangladesh clinches other relatively high scores in business usage and skills, indicating ICT awareness and usage among enterprises, and provision of government infrastructure for e-government services

Bangladesh needs to overcome key hurdles such as low PC penetration and poor internet connectivity to improve its ICT performance. However, these issues arise from major developmental challenges faced by the country, which need to be dealt with first.

Bangladesh Connectivity Performance by Scorecard Component