Brushing aside the recent propaganda about Nagad’s partnership by a vested quarter, Posts and Telecommunications Division Secretary Afzal Hossain on Sunday said Nagad is a financial service approved by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. In a video statement, he also said it is known to all that the Posts and Telecommunications Division and Postal Department have partnership over the mobile financial service Nagad. Read: No room for confusion over Nagad ownership: Postal Department “It’s a well-known fact that the Honorable Prime Minister has approved this service and she herself started the transaction with BDT 10,000. So, the Prime Minister’s approval of the service is there.” Earlier, Posts and Telecommunications Minister Mustafa Jabbar and Postal Department’s Director General Md Siraj Uddin, also trashed the propaganda, in separate statements, and they said there is no room for confusion that Nagad is a service of the Postal Department. Echoing them, Afzal said, “The Postal Department and Third Wave Technologies tied up and started their journey in 2017 with the Nagad service. Nagad has gained a significant position now in 2021 by overcoming obstacles with the passage of time.” Stating that Nagad will serve extensively for the wellbeing of the country’s citizens and will contribute to creating a cashless society in the coming days, the Secretary said, “Nagad is an exceptional service among all other financial services of the country. Both the Nagad’s customer base and profit are increasing day by day." He also said, “Nagad will turn into a complete information-based technological service overcoming all the obstacles in the future. Now we’re at the second position, and I hope very soon we’ll become number one and serve the country and its people better.” Read:Nagad to issue BDT 5 billion zero-coupon bond On March 26, 2019, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina inaugurated the Nagad service officially. In the past two and a half years, Nagad has developed a customer base of 5.5 crore with a daily average transaction of more than BDT 700 crore. Nagad is playing a vital role in the disbursement of the government’s donation, stipend and financial assistance with transparency and with extraordinary innovation in account opening, he said.

Global ICT infrastructure and smart devices provider Huawei has launched "SME Support Program" with ecosystem partners in the Asia-Pacific to deliver more technical support for economic recovery amid the pandemic. Each eligible Small and medium enterprise (SME) applicant could receive coupons worth up to $3,000 and free professional consulting service including cutting-edge cloud solutions for a variety of industry scenarios including financial service, education, e-commerce, gaming, IoT, application development, and enterprise applications. SMEs that have an account on the Huawei Cloud official website but have never used any paid service could apply for the SME Support Program page and receive consultation from cloud experts. Also read: Huawei posts 3.8% growth in 2020 Applications will be reviewed based on the company's cloud needs and the readiness of workloads for cloud deployment. This programme will continue until December 31 this year. SMEs are the engines of growth and innovation in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) region. They account for over 97% of all business and employ over half of the workforce across Apec economies. They contribute significantly to economic growth with their share of total economic output ranging from 40-60% in most economies of the region, according to Apec. Also read: Technology can be engine for human progress: Huawei’s Senior Vice President The pandemic has forced businesses to accelerate their digital transformation and move to the cloud one to three years ahead of schedule. "Huawei Cloud is now working with over 19,000 partners and 1.6 million developers and is committed to strengthening the digital economy to support a sustainable economic recovery. It offers over 220 services in categories such as storage, network, security, big data, AI, and IoT," read a press release. Read Huawei joints with BUET to make ICT talent ecosystem in country