Drastic cut in Budget-FY26ICT sector gets Tk17.32 billion

The interim-government has proposed Tk17.32 billion for the information and communication technology (ICT) sector in the fiscal year 2025-26, almost 29% lower than the outgoing fiscal year.

This allocation includes a Tk1 billion fund for promoting young entrepreneurship through start-up programmes in FY26, according to the budget speech televised on Monday.

“Considering the potential of the IT sector and encouraging new entrepreneurs in this sector, I propose to allocate Tk100 crore as start-up fund in the next fiscal year,” Finance Adviser Salehuddin Ahmed said in his budget speech.

“Huge employment opportunities have been created through freelancing as a field of proper application of youth energy. To utilise this opportunity, ‘Upazila Service and Information Technology Training Centers’ are being set up in 491 upazilas across the country to provide training to the youth,” he said.

To encourage and inspire research and development work on science and technology in the country, special research grants of about Tk166.6 million have been given in favour of 492 projects in different universities in the fiscal year 2024-25.

In addition, initiatives have been taken to provide fellowships to 1,500 researchers and students by the Science and Technology Fellowship Trust in 2025.

Regarding the tech budget, Mostafizur Rahaman Sohel, a former senior vice-president at Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services, said the proposed budget for technology is stereotyped as there is nothing new.

“We have kept boasting of embracing 4IR, AI, ML, etc. But is there anything in this budget to encourage investors to invest in these technology segments? No, there’s nothing. Then how would we expect to grow as a technology hub? Besides, R&D - one of the most crucial aspects of IT, is also totally ignored. Then how would we expect ourselves to innovate?” he said.

For the local software market, Mostafizur expected to see definite guidance for foreign software usage in Bangladesh. “To curb the aggression of imported software, we proposed to have a strong guideline of setting a mandatory rule of 50% consumption of local resources for big scale solutions like CBS, SAP & Oracle Financial’s implementation & AMC,” he said.

According to the expert, the ICT sector will continue to be struggling as there is no government patronisation here.