KATHMANDU – Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Rekha Sharma, and Indian Ambassador to Nepal Naveen Srivastava have held a meeting today.
In the meeting held at the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in Singha Durbar, Minister Sharma congratulated the newly formed government in India and expressed her confidence that Nepal-India relations would assume a new height in its tenure.
Sharma, also Spokesperson of the government, expressed her belief that there would be high-level cooperation between the two countries for development of communication and information technology (ICT) sector.
Stating that the government had announced year 2024 to 2034 as the Information Technology Decade starting from the upcoming fiscal year 2024/25, the Minister said that Indian cooperation would be important to advance it more effectively.
According to her, a master plan with annual action-plan and work areas had been put in place to advance the Information Technology Decade. She expressed her willingness to learn from the practices and experiences of India which made a stride in information technology sector in a short span of time.
As the first year of the Information Technology Decade would be a year of devising policies and building infrastructure, the Minister called for cooperation from all sectors towards this.
“We had been considering agriculture, tourism, energy and industries as the basis for economic prosperity,” Minister Sharma said, adding that along with these four sectors, information technology has been acknowledged as the new basis for economic transformation. “It is an important policy change for us.”
She viewed that public service delivery could be accelerated through development of telemedicine and e-learning platforms in rural areas by digitizing education and health services and thus the government has emphasized development of digital infrastructures.
She informed the Indian Envoy that progress was made in establishing national cyber security and organizing integrated government date security centre and said India could help in the matter of imparting training to human resources in this area.
In reciprocation, Indian Ambassador Srivastava said that India made a good progress in digital public infrastructure sector and articulated his readiness to extend support in development of information and technology in Nepal.
He pointed out the areas in which India could extend support to Nepal for development of information technology. They were, according to him, experience exchange and training, support in building digital public infrastructures and connecting Indian private sector that are operating start-ups in Information Technology sector for attracting investment in Nepal.
He opined that officials of Nepal could consider an exposure visit to Bangalore and New Delhi in India to learn from India’s progress in information technology for which they were ready to facilitate.
He also mentioned that SIM card distribution for Nepalis residing in India had been facilitated as per the commitment made by him during Minister Sharma’s official visit to India last year.
During the meeting, Minister Sharma drew the attention of the Government of India towards effectively accelerate the development projects being constructed in Nepal with Indian loan assistance.
Present in the meeting were officials of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
