Kathmandu, January 29:

The 14th edition of CAN InfoTech 2008 kicked off here today at Birendra International Convention Centre (BICC) in Kathmandu.

Krishna Bahadur Mahara, minister for information and communications, inaugurated the country’s largest annual ICT gala, that will last till February 3. Mahara, on the occasion, called the private sector to join hands with the government in realizing the government’s goal of ‘mobile at everyone’s hand and Internet in every household’.

He admitted that the government has yet to play a catalystic role in the promotion and development of information and communication technology in the country, though it has realised its vast importance. “The government will certainly give importance for e-governance, e-commerce, e-transaction and other internet-enables services in course of developing knowledge-based society,” Mahara added.

Organised by Computer Association of Nepal (CAN) with a slogan of building ‘New Nepal: e-Nepal by 2020’, the six-day long mega ICT event has over 170 firms as participants. They are displaying their products and services through 279 stalls. The IT gala expects to draw more

than 350,000 visitors throughout the event.

Biplav Man Singh, president of CAN, called upon all the concerned stakeholders for the promotion and usage of ICT tools to build ‘Nepal Nepal: an e-Nepal by 2020’. “The ICT should be promoted as pertinent tools for socio-economic development of the country,” he said, urging the government to introduce the new amended IT Policy and build infrastructures for the smooth development of ICT.

FNCCI president Chandi Raj Dhakal criticised the government’s failure in implementing the policies and programmes it has brought to develop the ICT sector. “Although touted as priority sector, nothing much has done to promote the sector,” he said.

Sharad Devkota, vice-chairman at High Level Commission for IT, also admitted that nothing much has been done in respect to usage and application of ICT as development tools. “Only ICT tools,” he said.

Although the first introduction of computer in Nepal was ahead of neighbouring China and India, we still lag behind in terms of exploiting the benefits of ICT, said Surendra Bir Malakar, president of Nepal Chamber of Commerce. “Nepal is no where in the world map of IT and it seems the policymakers are afraid of the term ‘e’.”

Pankaj Jalan, coordinator of ICT conference that is being held on the sideline of the main event from February 1 to 2, informed that more than 16 working papers will be presented

in the conference. Ashank Desai, president of ASOCIO, will make a keynote deliberation.