The only need for this is to 'turn the digital divide into digital dividend' through co-operation and joint ventures, speakers observed at a business session of Bangladesh Malaysia Business Forum.

Syed Marghub Morshed, chairman of Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (BTRA), chaired the session titled "Bridging Digital Divide" at Sonargaon Hotel.

Speakers said the existing digital divide surfaced with the lack of e-mail facilities, telecommunications, mobile phone services between the two countries. "Such gaps should be reduced for overall economic cooperation between the two Muslim nations."

While addressing as chief guest at the session Minister for Post & Telecommunications of Bangladesh Md Amninul Haque said: “We want to share experience of Malaysia and be a development partner in ICT sector."

He said Bangladesh is lagging far behind Malaysia, India and even Pakistan in this regard. "But we have determination to go ahead with our limited resources."

The minister, in this regard, mentioned various steps taken by the government to deregulate the telecommunications sector. He hoped that Bangladesh would be linked with the information super highway early next year.

"We can expect a remarkable change in the sector after being connected with the super highway and hope our younger generation will fulfil our goal" he assured the Malaysian delegates.

IT expert Prof Jamilur Reza Chowdhury of Bangladesh and Haji Ismail from Malaysia also spoke on the occasion.

Chowdhury in his key note speech observed that Malaysia has great potential to develop business in Bangladesh as the ICT market is yet to expand much.

Explaining various aspects of ICT development in Bangladesh, Chowdhury said several thousand IT graduates come out from the universities and the technical colleges every year here. The emergency requirements for these IT experts would be met very soon, he hoped.

He, however, observed the progress in infrastructural development in this regard is not satisfactory. "Only 1.5 million people in Bangladesh have access to e-mail facilities. On the other hand, access to telephone facilities in the rural areas is much less than one per," he noted.

Haji Ismail said the Islamic states should not miss the benefits of IT in developing their country and glorifying Islamic values.

The Malaysian IT expert said private sectors need political leadership and policy guideline for development in this sector.

Referring to various policies and infrastructure developments in Malaysia in this regard, Ismail said all schools concentrated on IT related education in Malaysia following a policy framework launched recently.