A three-member delegation from India led by Rakesh Singh, the additional secretary of India's Department of Information Technology, was in Brunei for the meeting.
"I'm informed that about 150 local ICT companies and 10 IT training centres arc operating in Brunei today. We also understand that His Majesty's Government has allocated close to $500-600 million for over 200 IT projects in the country and as we were discussing earlier (during a courtesy call). India offers its technical capabilities for any area of ICT that Brunei wishes to avail from the country (India)," Singh said in his remarks as co-chairman of the meeting.
"I would again like to state that we are very open to join hands for technical collaboration for human resource development, capacity building or any other area which is of mutual interest." he added.
Singh also spoke on the role of ICT in development efforts globally."We all know it has the potential for reducing poverty, fostering growth in developing countries. By connecting people and places. ICT plays a vital role in national, regional and global development," he said.
He recalled that there has been an active interest in promoting cooperation in the field of ICT between Brunei and India, since 2006, when highlevel delegation exchange visits took place. This was heightened further during His Majesty the Sultan and Yang Di-Pertuan of Brunei Darussalam's state visit to India in 2008, which made way to the birth of the joint working group and a Memorandum of Understanding (M0U) between the communications ministries of both countries.
"It's obvious that at that time a lot of high-level interest was evident for collaboration between the two countries. We would like that as a consequence of this joint working group meeting, the same level of engagement to happen between the two countries to take joint ICT agenda forward." he said.
Singh also highlighted India's rapid development in the sector. He said that India's software exports currently stood at US$47 billion, constituting 17 per cent of the country's total exports, from a "mere" US$1 million in 1991.
"Obviously. this level of economic activity has had excellent spin-offs, in terms of employment and in terms of rising income levels. Despite the severe global downturn, the software sector has continued to register a robust level of growth of l7 per cent in 2009-2009, when most other sectors showed negative growth rates in the country." he highlighted.
With regards to a manpower, the additional secretary said that India has a 'very vast resource of high quality and creative engineering technological and management manpower" as well as several institutions for human resource development.
These strides had attracted a number of renowned multinational companies such as Nokia, Microsoft and Intel to invest in India. With an average of about 15 million new mobile telephone network subscribers every month, India's telecommunications network is presently the second largest in the world, he added.
Singh also said that during the meeting, the delegation would present India's e-governance plan, "in which the state-wide area network is a very major component of the e-governance plan".
On Brunei's part, Ministry of Communications Permanent Secretary Hj Alaihuddin POKDG Hj Mohd Taha said that the MoU signed in New Dehli in May 2009 included exploring cooperation opportunities in "human resource development for WT education, computer system, computer hardware, software, development and services, e-Commerce and e-Government, and interest applications", among others.
"As the umbrella industry of this MoU, it is the role of the Ministry (of Communications) to follow through and initiate further, and coordinate with relevant agencies in Brunei Darussalam so that these agencies would be able to work together with their relevant counterparts from India in their own respective specialised area of expertise," Hj Alaihuddin said.
He remarked that the meeting was timely and served as the right platform "to initiate a series of activities and implement the scope of cooperation by first and foremost, concentrating on a few focus practical areas that enable such cooperation to take off"'.
Among the items on the agenda for the closed-door meeting was related to the establishment of the joint working group, enhancing manpower development, expertise consultations, e-governance and ICT development in Brunei, according to a statement from the Ministry of Communications. Presentations were also delivered on the industrial developments and e-Government services of both countries.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Ubaidillah Mash and Adam Radhi
Quelle/Source: Brunei Direct, 18.02.2010
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