Youth icon and IT visionary shares how the IT sector with the right support can become one of the more prominent contributors to Bangladesh’s economy
Lately, the prospects of the software and ITES industry have been looking up. The Industry’s share of GDP is on the rise and we have seen major advancements in last few years in terms of policy support and capacity building. However, there are plenty of opportunities for further development. BASIS has been working towards achieving One Bangladesh vision by 2018 which includes reaching $1 billion in Software, ITES and BPO exports. Up till now, we’ve attained $300 million USD exports of that goal. So I am quite optimistic about the prospects of the industry in the near future. It is very likely that the sector will become one of the major players in our economy.
We have the kind of manpower who withproper skill development programs, can be developed into an extremely skilled and competent workforce. Creating competent IT professionals in the country has been one of the main objectives of BASIS. With a view to achieve that objective, BITM (BASIS Institute for Technology and Management) was founded. The sole purpose of BITM is to train and develop appropriate skills in the people interested in working in the sector. Under the Skill for Employee Investment Program (SEIP), we are training over 23,000 skilled IT professionals throughout the country free of cost by 2019. We’ve already trained and employed 400,000 IT professionals through this program. Along with that, we are working in collaboration with the LICT project which aims to train 34,000 more.
The sector has immense support from the government and its subsidiaries. They are extremely committed to the Digital Bangladesh vision and the sector is expected to have an amazing impact on achieving the same. Software and ITES sector is being given all the necessary aids and attention. We’re operating in an IT friendly environment with favorable policies. ICT companies are now tax exempted till 2024. This is the best phase in recent times to operate in the industry. I’m confident that software and ITES has all the potentials to be the next biggest sector of our country.
