 Mr. Chair, Mr. Secretary-General, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, Good afternoon. At the outset, I would like to thank the Government of Romania for hosting the ITU Plenary Potential Conference 2022. The Secretary-General and his team deserve our specific mention for their reports in successfully organising the event. The theme of the conference, Connect and Unite, along with the goals of universal connectivity and sustainable digital transformation, as such, have extended well our pursuit for achieving the targets of the SDGs of the agenda 2030. We see rapid evolution of new technologies in the telecommunication sector that demonstrate our advancement. At the same time, this evolution wins inequality and creates digital divide within and among the societies. Dear August Gathering, we need to create a level playing field for affordable, interoperable and secure telecommunication, ICT infrastructure, services and applications for all. We place our high confidence in the ITU to play in that pursuit. In the same vein, the member states need to demonstrate their sincere commitment, closure, cooperation and readiness to eliminate the digital divide and materialise the digital transformation across the globe. Bangladesh has made remarkable success in the telecommunication sector in the last decade under the visionary leadership of our Honourable Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina. On the way to realising the dream of the father of the nation, the success is widely recognised by the global community. Now I would like to shed light on a few of our recent success in the telecommunication sector. The rate of mobile penetration is 105.83%. The tele-density rate has, of late, reached 106.22%. Bangladesh is going to launch the second Bangabandhu satellite soon. Currently, the revenue earning from our telecommunication industry stands to be US$3.8 billion. We are optimistic that it will grow by 34% in the next five years. Bangladesh is now the 8 largest mobile market in the world in terms of unique subscriber base. The contribution for this sector is about 1.8% of our total GDP. We visualise that the telecommunication sector has the potential to be the key enabler of our economy within a foreseeable future. I wish the ITU an important conference success. I thank you, Mr. Chair.