Bangladesh’s internet penetration stands at 53 percent, lagging behind regional leaders such as Bhutan at 88 percent and the Maldives at 85 percent, according to a new Asian Development Bank (ADB) report. The figure places the country broadly in line with India at 57 percent and Nepal at 56 percent, while Sri Lanka, despite near-universal 4G coverage, records active usage of just 51 percent.
The ADB’s Digital Public Infrastructure: Landscape and Opportunities in South Asia report identifies affordability constraints and low digital literacy as the main barriers to adoption in Bangladesh. It highlights two critical challenges: a stagnating penetration rate and a widening digital gender gap.
Only 19 percent of women in Bangladesh use mobile data, compared with 36 percent of men. Rural users are 29 percent less likely to access mobile internet than urban residents, compounded by a functional digital literacy rate of just 49 percent. Despite high mobile phone ownership, large segments of the population remain excluded from the country’s digital transformation.
The report also points to weaknesses in Bangladesh’s foundational digital identity system. The Smart National ID currently covers around 40 percent of the population, compared with near-universal coverage of 99 percent for India’s Aadhaar. Even Bhutan and the Maldives report higher coverage, at 46 percent and 47 percent respectively.
Crucially, Bangladesh’s NID system lacks open APIs and a consent-based architecture, limiting its role as a universal digital building block for public services and the broader economy.
Physical connectivity remains another vulnerability. Bangladesh relies on two undersea cables following similar routes, increasing the risk of nationwide outages. Sri Lanka and the Maldives benefit from more resilient, geographically diverse submarine links.
At the operational level, many rural government offices function on bandwidth as low as 5 Mbps, constraining their ability to deliver digital services effectively.
Institutional fragmentation further slows progress. Unlike India’s unified digital governance under bodies such as UIDAI, Bangladesh’s ecosystem is split across the ICT Division, Bangladesh Computer Council, and Aspire to Innovate (a2i), with overlapping mandates and no binding legal framework to enforce system integration.
This has left core registries operating in silos. In agriculture, soil, water, and weather data sit across different ministries with no common architecture. In payments, while India’s UPI handles about 85 percent of retail transactions, Bangladesh’s interoperability platform, Binimoy, is described as “stalled,” leaving more than half of retail payments cash-based.
Despite these constraints, the report identifies notable strengths.
Mobile financial services are described as the “crown jewel” of Bangladesh’s digital transition. Platforms such as bKash and Nagad process nearly 24 million transactions daily. bKash alone serves 75 million registered users and commands roughly 75 percent of market share, supported by a nationwide network of 379,000 agents.
Another success is the country’s “phygital” bridge: around 9,500 digital centres serving six to seven million rural users each month. These centres have reportedly prevented 12.9 billion in-person government visits and saved citizens an estimated $21.8 billion in time and travel costs.
Bangladesh is also building momentum in health digital public infrastructure. The Surokkha vaccine platform has reached nearly 60 million users, and pilots for universal health IDs are underway. ADB modelling suggests a fully implemented health DPI stack could generate $500 million annually by reducing duplication and enabling real-time tracking.
To meet its 2030 target of $5 billion in ICT exports, the report says Bangladesh must move from a vendor-led approach to strategic private-sector partnerships. The approval of the Personal Data Protection Ordinance in October 2025 is seen as a critical step toward building trust.
By enacting a unified DPI governance law and expanding the Bangla QR framework, Bangladesh could leapfrog legacy systems and redefine its standing in South Asia’s digital race.
