Kathmandu, May 24:

A three-day International Conference on E-commerce in the 21st Century- ECIC-2008 is being held in Kathmandu from June 2 -4 to promote use of ICT tools in development activities.

Organised by the Central Computer Department at Tribhuvan University, High Level Commission for IT and National Information Communication Centre, the event will focus on usage of e-commerce and internet-enabled services.

Saroj Devkota, vice-chairman of HLCIT, said that an international event like this conference would be helpful to explore Nepal’s potentials in the IT sector. Although some initiatives have been taken at public and private levels, Nepal is still far behind compared to its neighbours in IT development, he said.

Surendra Bir Malakar, president of Nepal Chamber of Commerce, urged that Nepal should take advantage of its geographical proximity with China and India -world leaders in hardware and software development, respectively. He said Nepali private sector is open to promote use of ICT tools and Internet enabled services such as e-commerce, e-payment and e-procurement.

Kishore Kumar Agrawal, programme coordinator, briefed about the event, which seeks to provide a forum for researchers, academicians, engineers, practioners and entrepreneurs interested in e-commerce to share and discuss e-related research, technical, curricular, business, legal and ethical topics and concerns.

Other areas include e-system development, computer security, cryptography, electronic payment system, large volume transactions processing with reliability, data mining, internet marketing, supply chain management, e-governance, e-education, and national international law and regulations.

Prof Biswanath Upreti, chair of the organising committee said the conference would provide an appropriate forum for international participants to meet Nepalese IT specialists, entrepreneurs and industry to discuss and explore opportunities towards future

collaborations for mutual benefit. He informed that participants and experts from Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Fiji, India, Italy, Japan, Libya, Luxemburg, England and USA would present papers in the event.