The central bank governor called upon yesterday the ICT stakeholders to come forward with specific suggestions that can help introduce soon the use of credit card on the internet.

Bangladesh Bank (BB) Governor Atiur Rahman also urged the local software makers to tie up with foreign companies to supply banking solutions to the local market. "Initially you can team up with foreign corh-panies to develop competence."

Rahman assured the stakeholders of easing the process for getting money from ICT Equity Entrepreneurship Fund (EEF), and asked them to become more aware of fund misuse.

He was speaking at a seminar on Banking & Finance in Light of Digital Bangladesh organised by Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS) in Dhaka.

The ICT (information and communication technology) stakeholders sought central bank's intervention in ensuring the use of local software in banking sector.

The government in the current fiscal year has allocated Tk 200 crore for ICT EEF, which is Tk 100 crore more than that of the previous year. However, in terms of utilisation, the fund remained almost idle last fiscal year as the entrepreneurs took only Tk 60 lakh from the fund.

The stakeholders blamed the situation on the process of allocation.

Although the BB was tasked with disbursing the fund, recently the government handed over the fund disbursement responsibility to Investment Corporation of Bangladesh (ICB).

"Regulator and operator should not be the same," said the BB governor regarding appointing ICB to disburse the EEF.

Humayun Kabir, managing director of ICB, suggested the entrepreneurs should design their project proposals on their own, not by any consultants.

Habibullah N Karim, president of BASIS, said local software companies are struggling for getting global certification due to the central bank's certain restrictions on remitting. Global certification is needed to outsource IT services.