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The government expects to bring the subsidy provided to the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB) down to nearly zero within the next five years, Commerce Minister Khandaker Abdul Muktadir has said.
He made the remarks on Thursday at the inauguration of TCB’s digital transformation programme at the TCB auditorium in Karwan Bazar, Dhaka.
The minister said the digital transformation would focus on improving services for beneficiaries, ensuring proper use of public funds and bringing full transparency to TCB’s management.
He said TCB’s various initiatives and digital transformation could help save Tk300–350 crore in subsidies in the current fiscal year compared with the previous year.
At the event, the ‘Upokari’ mobile app was launched to make services for family cardholders easier, faster and more accountable.
As part of the digital transformation, TCB has introduced a digital database, secure digital TCB cards, online dealer management and payment collection systems, AI-based real-time monitoring, a contact centre, all-in-one point-of-sale (POS) machines and the Upokari app.
On dealer appointments, Muktadir said TCB could not provide dealerships to all interested applicants. If 10 people apply for a dealership in an area with 1,500 beneficiaries, only one dealer would be appointed for them. In municipalities and city corporations, there would be one dealer per ward.
The minister said the country’s market supply system was still not smooth, with gaps in the supply chain causing significant differences between farm-gate and retail prices. He said a lack of transparency in the market was behind such disruptions.
TCB has set a target of one crore beneficiaries. However, verification of national identity cards, mobile numbers and other information has led to the removal of around 59 lakh ineligible applicants. The current list contains about 89 lakh beneficiaries, limiting the scope for appointing more dealers at the union level, he said.
TCB Chairman Brig Gen Mohammad Faisal Azad said a range of new digital services had been introduced to improve service delivery, dealer and beneficiary management, monitoring and citizen engagement.
He said the Upokari app would work as a digital wallet and provide an additional secure means of accessing TCB services without replacing existing TCB cards. Beneficiaries will be able to purchase products using digital invoices containing encrypted QR codes, meaning they will not be deprived of services even if their cards are lost or damaged.
The digital invoice system is also expected to reduce TCB’s SMS costs by more than half, he said.
Of the 80 lakh activated cardholder beneficiaries, around 45 lakh have completed the self-activation process using their own smartphones, indicating that more than half of beneficiaries are capable of using smartphones, Azad added.
Commerce Secretary Md Ataur Rahman Khan and Engineer Khaled Hossain Mahbub Shyamal, chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Ministry of Commerce, also spoke at the event.
