New York, Sept 21 – Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has underscored the need for promoting a deeper understanding and broader exchange within the South aiming to go far and fast.“The countries in the South are often well-positioned to understand each other’s development realities and challenges. We, therefore, need to promote a deeper understanding and broader exchange within the South,” she said.
The Prime Minister was speaking at a high-level side event titled ‘SDG implementation, financing and monitoring: Sharing innovations through south-south and triangular cooperation’ held at UN Headquarters here on Wednesday.
Sheikh Hasina said development challenges cannot be addressed by government alone. “The private sector can and should make enhanced contributions to the national development efforts.”
She said Bangladesh is promoting a culture of innovation and service within the government. “Our Vision 2021 of ‘Digital Bangladesh’ is a reflection of our new culture. Engaging the larger society for achieving the SDGs is our motto.”
The Prime Minister said Bangladesh is long known as a development laboratory while the country has now firmly added public service delivery to its focused areas for innovation.
She said the government set up over 13,000 One-stop Digital Centres in all local government institutions and post offices.
“Millions of citizens now get easy access to over a hundred public and private services. These include critical services like birth registration, land records, passports, banking and e-Commerce. In 2016 alone, citizens saved over 1.5 billion dollars and 1 billion person days by avoiding travelling to the district headquarters.”
The Prime Minister said one of the most recent innovations is a simple but powerful tool called SDG Tracker. It can be used for comprehensive target setting and tracking progress of each SDG, along with the indicators. “It’s an innovative platform that takes advantage of the massive data revolution. With the launch of the SDG Tracker, we’re making it available for countries in the South.”
The Prime Minister said there is an African saying, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. I think if we want to go far and fast, we need to be innovative together.” – UNB
