Bangladesh's emerging dotcom ventures face a setback after the central bank rejected a move to allow online transactions "in the near future," information technology experts say.
"The future of e-commerce in Bangladesh is bleak if the central bank sticks to its decision," Abdur Razzak, managing director of the Raspit Data Management and Telecommunications Ltd., told AFP.
He said the country's commercial banks do not have links with the global Cyber Cash Gateway required for receiving overseas credit card payments from clients of e-commerce ventures.
Unless the banks are allowed to forge the links, the websites launched so far will remain as "object of display," Razzak said.
Central bank governor Mohammad Farashuddin, rejecting the move to allow online transactions late last month, said: "We want to proceed with this very carefully."
"It's a very sensitive matter. If you allow transactions through the Internet, it will be difficult to know what will be traded," said Farashuddin, who heads a committee looking into the issue.
"This is a matter on which we don't have technical efficiency and supervision capability," he said, adding such transactions also lack the required legal base in Bangladesh.
Sources in the IT sector say the country's first e-commerce bank set up by a former diplomat was yet to begin operations.
Meanwhile Bangladesh's first e-shopping website, www.munshigi.com, has so far had "very poor" response because of the limitations, they say.
Munshi Giasuddin, who floated munshigi.com, said the lack of a cyber law, required for online transactions, was harming the future of e-commerce in Bangladesh."
Farashuddin, however, said the government would support development in other areas of the IT sector, adding an equity fund had been established to support the software sector.
Software exporters are allowed to retain 40 percent of their earnings in foreign exchange, he added.
Bangladeshi exporters are allowed to retain between 7.5 and 40 percent of their earnings in foreign exchange, depending on the importance of the sector.
But, Razzak, whose Raspit became the country's first IT company to go public last week, said a major portion of the software is traded online and that if such transactions are not allowed the prospect of software export may not be bright.
"The future of e-commerce in Bangladesh is bleak unless the government takes immediate steps to remove the bottlenecks," Kawsar H. Chowdhury, managing director of the AiPath Bangladesh Ltd., told AFP.
He added: "We are trying to emerge with our ventures under serious limitations. We are going ahead without introducing real-time shopping."
High cost of internet use, narrow internet user base and low data transmission speed caused by poor quality telephone cables are the other factors affecting e-commerce ventures, IT experts say.
The cables used for telephone connections in Bangladesh can transmit only 9.6 kilo bytes per second, which is extremely low for effective internet use, they added.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed's government, which has declared IT as a thrust sector, exempted all duties and taxes on import of computer and other accessories in 1998.— (AFP)
© Agence France Presse 2000
© 2000 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
