#Title

Investment pouring
FROM PAGE B1
demand for such a facility,” said Shahed Alam, chief corporate and regulatory officer of Robi Axiata.
“As the first privately owned tier IV data centre of the country, it will pave the way for private enterprises seeking enhanced security for their sensitive data.”
Equipped with 300 racks with an initial investment of Tk 50 crore, DataHub Asia has set up a colocation and cloud data centre in Thakurgaon recently.
“With our robust infrastructure and strategic location, the facility is suited for various sectors, including banking, financial services, hosting, and manufacturing,” said Md Shoroer Morshad Porag, CEO of DataHub Asia.
He said data localisation, the practice of storing data within a country’s jurisdiction, has gained significant importance in recent years and Bangladesh should prioritise policy for that.
Dhaka Colo Limited ventured into the data centre business more than five years ago. It currently operates five centres in the capital, with one having 150 racks, in Chittagong with 50 racks, in Jashore with 50 racks, and in Khulna with 50 racks, all at an investment of Tk 100 crore.
“We are currently operating at a breakeven,” said Kamal Hossain, managing director of Dhaka Colo.
He thinks it is important to address policy concerns since 90 percent of the data is stored outside the country, leading to an increased international bandwidth cost and latency.
According to industry people, although Bangladesh’s data centre sector is attracting some foreign investments, it is low compared to peer economies.
Data centres in India have garnered significant attention from international investors and developers, partly due to favourable government policies.
Global technology companies such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon have begun the construction of data centres in India, which has received $10 billion in investments in the segment since 2020, propelled by surging data consumption and demand.
Yotta Data Services, an arm of Indian conglomerate Hiranandani Group, has announced that it is investing Tk 2,000 crore to build a tier IV data centre at the Bangabandhu Hi-Tech City.
“The construction work has already started,” said GSM Jafarullah, managing director of the Bangladesh Hi-Tech Park Authority, recently.
Jatra International, which has attracted investment from an international company, is investing about Tk 800 crore in the park, according to the authority.
DataVolt, a Saudi Arabian data centre manufacturing and power generation giant, has recently unveiled plans to invest $100 million in establishing a cutting-edge data centre in Bangladesh, said the ICT Division.
The government has also set up two data centres.
The Bangladesh Computer Council built a data centre at the cost of about Tk 250 crore to store the data of government entities and sites.
In 2019, the government established the National Data Centre, the largest in Bangladesh, at the Bangabandhu Hi-Tech City at an investment of Tk 1,500 crore. Funded by China, it is run by Bangladesh Data Center Company Limited (BDCCL).
BDCCL and GenNext Technologies Limited earlier this year signed an agreement to set up Meghna Cloud, the country’s first cloud data centre.
With $12.5 million in investment, the platform will provide cloud service infrastructure, including servers, storage and networking equipment, and associated software technology.
Sayeef Rahman, chief operating officer of Meghna Cloud, said Bangladesh’s journey towards cloud is currently at a nascent stage.
“Apart from raising awareness, we need to create a service mindset with skilled tech resources. We should also be careful in catering to cyber security for these clouds.”
Rahman thinks the government needs to step up its efforts for data sovereignty so that companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon localise data.
“If it is done, it will help us bring down the cost of internet.”
He sought incentives from the government for building data centres in technology parks.
Electricity may be made available at an affordable rate while the land lease rate could be lower. Technology imports should be facilitated, he said.
According to Md Hasibur Rashid, director and chief marketing officer at Novocom, Bangladesh has a bright prospect in the data centre business.
“Once global content providers start to maintain more cache servers in Bangladesh to bring contents to local consumers, there will be more demand for data centres.”

ECB’s Lagarde signals no rate cuts soon
AFP, Frankfurt
The European Central Bank is not set to cut interest rates for the “next couple of quarters”, president Christine Lagarde signalled Friday, while also warning of a potential resurgence in inflation.
The central bank hiked rates 10 times in a row to tame runaway consumer prices but held them steady for the first time in over a year at its October meeting.
With eurozone inflation falling to 2.9 percent last month and higher borrowing costs weighing on the single currency area, speculation has intensified about when the ECB may start cutting rates.
Speaking at a Financial Times event, Lagarde sought to douse hopes this could happen any time soon.
If rates were held at their current levels for “long enough”, then it will “make a significant contribution to bringing inflation back to our two-percent target in the medium term”, she said.
Pressed on how long this might be, she said: “Long enough is long enough. It’s not something that (means) in the next couple of quarters we’ll be seeing a change.”
Last month’s slowdown in inflation brought the indicator to the lowest level since July 2021.
Consumer price rises in the 20 countries that use the euro had peaked at 10.6 percent in October last year, driven mainly by surging energy costs after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Lagarde acknowledged that “inflation has come down massively”, adding that “one could argue... monetary policy has done its job”.
But she added that heavy falls in energy prices in particular had helped drive the fall, and suggested another energy shock could prompt the figure to jump again.
“We should not assume that this respectable 2.9 headline number is something that should be taken for granted,” she said.
“There will be a resurgence of probably (a) higher number going forwards and we should be expecting that.”