Walton Digi Tech to supply 25,125 laptops for ICT Division project

Walton Digi Tech Industries has won the contract to supply over 25,000 laptops to the Her Power Project of the ICT Division.

The Cabinet Committee on Government Purchase on Wednesday (25 October) approved the Tk165 crore procurement proposal as the company was the lowest bidder.

The homegrown tech manufacturer starting in 2018 has already built a capacity to manufacture 1.5 million laptop and desktop computers a year, which is enough to cater to the local market demand nowadays, according to its Additional Managing Director Liakat Ali.

Tt served around one-fifth of the market in 2022.

The lone computer manufacturer is adding 30% or more value locally as circuit boards, random access memory, SSD storage, device body and a large number of items are being manufactured in its Gazipur Plant.

"We are gradually increasing local value addition, and some computer parts like chips are being supplied by the global leader Intel," Ali told TBS.

"This is not the first time we are supplying computers to the government, we have experience successfully delivering world-class laptops, and tablet PCs under much bigger contracts," he added.

Local manufacturing of computers, subject to gigantic investments in facilities and technologies, could be more encouraged if the government widened the duty gap between manufactured and imported products, he said.

Some 7.5 percentage point difference is not enough to protect local manufacturing as the cost of capital invested is even higher in the country, believes Liakat Ali.

His company eyes exporting computer parts and it already has had a good start by exporting computer circuit boards to Greece recently.

Walton Digi Tech, also a top-tier smartphone manufacturer, has a mobility division that launched electric scooters for the local market.

In 2022, the company manufactured around 150,000 desktop and laptop computers and 350,000 tablet PCs.