Published on 08:03 PM, September 23, 2019

Facebook unwilling to open office in Dhaka

A delegation of Facebook are in a meeting with Posts and Telecommunication Minister Mustafa Jabbar at BTRC office in Dhaka city on Monday, September 23, 2019. Photo: Collected

Facebook has denied to set up any office or install its local service in Bangladesh right now as the market size is not sustainable here enough.

A nine-member delegation of Facebook led by its Public Policy Manager Varun Reddy shared this in a meeting with Posts and Telecommunication Minister Mustafa Jabbar at BTRC office in Dhaka city today.

The delegation members assured that they will comply with all the requests placed by Bangladesh government as early as possible but it will not be sustainable to set up an office in capital Dhaka at the moment, Md Jahurul Haque, chairman of Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) said after the meeting.

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However, Facebook will appoint a local representative for Bangladesh market within next four to six weeks to make the process faster to ensure value added tax and government revenues from their advertisement earnings, he informed.

Senior officials from National Board of Revenue, Bangladesh Bank, Telecommunication Ministry and law enforcing agencies attended the meeting where they also requested Facebook, the world's leading social communication platform, to ensure a process to register customers for ensuring security.

The delegation members also informed that Facebook will work on it but they did not give any confirmation, said an officer wishing not to be named.

In the meeting they also discussed security issues where government officials also showed some duplicated accounts and asked Facebook to take action about it.