Intel Chairman’s Visit in Bangladesh
Intel Corporation is the world’s largest semiconductor company and the inventor of the x86 series of microprocessors, the processors found in many personal computers. Dr. Craig R. Barrett, the chairman of this giant chip maker company, will visit Bangladesh soon. The purpose of his visit is predicted to find out facts for investment opportunity in Bangladesh. This came in newspapers a few days ago like:
“Intel Corporation’s chairman Craig Barrett will visit Bangladesh during first week of September 2007. This could be viewed as an opportunity to develop partnership that brings a win-win platform. Craig made similar visit to Vietnam in 2002 which triggered the staggering investment afterward.”
Bangladesh needs foreign direct investment (FDI) from companies like Intel, but the political and infrastructure constraints are not quite attractive for such investment from big companies. However, we have a huge labor force at a comparatively cheap wage which makes us attractive to them. All we need now is a chance to prove ourselves to the big corporates. If Intel comes and operates a hardware assembly and test facility in Bangladesh successfully, it will be a matter of time for other major global players to have the faith on the business environment and opportunites in Bangladesh.
Our current investment scenario is no less than pathetic due to poor conversion of investment proposals into actual implementation. Intel chairman is visiting us in a time when we are just coming out of a major flood, facing a critical political age. But we hope that none of these will stop us from showing our real potential to this big corporate player. Intel’s investment in Vietnam turned this country from a state where we are today to a state where we want to go.
This could be relevant that Intel has an involvement with Bangladesh already. There are a few hundreds of BUET students working in Intel’s Design/Fabrication labs in CA,WA, VA,OR states in USA. A few years back, they formed a body named ‘IBA’ (Intel Bangladesh Association), which was approved by Intel authorities. And as an acknowledgment of contribution from this university, Intel funded for a simulation lab named ‘Robert Noyce Simulation Lab’ (named after one of the two founders of Intel) in Electrical & Electronic Dept of BUET. You can find details on IBA here: http://www.buet.ac.bd/eee/iba
In our next AABEA event of 4th September with Dr. Ishfaqur Reza in Santa Clara, I would like to know whether IBA is behind this visit of Craig Barrett to Bangladesh. NRBs have been trying to portray Bangladesh in a positive manner throughout the world and I believe this is one of those efforts.
If Intel thinks that the one engineer’s wage in USA can accomodate 10 engineers in Bangladesh, it may be good enough to outweigh the current infrastructure lackings we have. Imagine Intel investing $200 million or $500 million in Bangladesh and the economic picture of the country will change radically as other foreign investors will feel safe to invest here as well.
The caretaker govt should have done their homework to take proper advantage of Dr. Barrett’s visit to Bangladesh and show him our strength and potential. We are looking forward to this visit with lot of hopes, with great expectations. We can do it, we will do it.
[…] Source: Taken from my post at http://aabeat.com/blog/?p=11 […]
Pingback by Intel Chairman’s Visit in Bangladesh « Ashik’s IT Thoughts — August 29, 2007 @ 8:36 am
Excellent write-up Ashik, summarizing some of the key points that we the well-wishers of Bangladesh can think of. I sincerely hope that adequate homework has been done this time on the part of the Bangladeshi hosts so that we can get the maximum benefits out of this visit. I recall the visit by Bill Gates in the recent past. I do not believe we were able to capitalize on the visit adequately to gain momentum in the software field. Maybe it was due to lack of homework, or maybe due to lack of our preparedness to join the IT revolution. But hopefully we learnt our lessons from that and preparing better this time.
AABEA, along with quite a few NRBs have gone back to Bangladesh trying to jumpstart the semiconductor-related expertise pool in Bangladesh. Mr. Enayetur Rahman, Didar Islam, Ishfaqur Reza, all are Silicon Valley alums who are trying to help the Bangladeshi industry in different ways. AABEA itself has arranged semiconductor design software in Bangladesh, but apparently not enough students can be found to take courses on this subject. Hopefully a big name like Intel will expedite the efforts of creating a good pool of trained resources in Bangladesh.
Comment by BBCDTechnologist — August 30, 2007 @ 3:18 pm
Here is an article from Shaptahik 2000 in Bengali detailing the purpose of the visit of Intel’s Chairman in Bangaldesh. According to this article, Intel is coming to launch it’s “World Ahead Program” in Bangladesh with Dr. Younus’ Grameen Solutions. To know more about this Grameen-Intel partnership, please go through the following 2 articles.
http://www.shaptahik2000.info/issues/2007/year-10/issue_16/pdf/pk20070831.pdf (Sorry for English audience as this one is in Bengali)
http://voiceofsouth.org/2007/08/31/intel
Comment by ashik4java — August 31, 2007 @ 9:51 am
Looks like Intel is going to give away its Classroom PC to Bangladesh. It is interesting to note the rivalry between this initiative and the One Laptop Per Child initiative which uses AMD chips.
http://opensource.sys-con.com/read/386906.htm
The two initiatives seems to be joining hands recently.
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8792044763.html
We, the Bangladeshi well-wishers don’t mind either way if we get cheap computers with good networking technology. But hopefully the hosts in Bangladesh will also introduce the guest(s) from Intel to the wealth of our knowledge-pool - our brains from BUET and other Universities. Hopefully they can convince Intel to help us move up the value-chain by broadening some of its development activities from nearby Bangalore to Dhaka. Note that the word on the street is Intel had to move back quite a few of its engineers to the US who had moved to India. Since Bangladesh is starting from scratch, maybe appropriate lessons can be learnt so that in the greenfield, appropriate semiconductor design, verification and testing expertise is built in Bangladesh, which will make the investment worthwhile.
Comment by BBCDTechnologist — September 2, 2007 @ 1:36 am
Follow Up: Ultimately no effort was there to convince Intel Chairman to invest in Bangladesh at this stage.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070904/bangladesh_intel.html?.v=1
http://voiceofsouth.org/2007/09/04/grameen-and-intel/
Comment by ashik4java — September 13, 2007 @ 3:34 pm