If proper steps are taken, Bangladesh can earn a huge foreign exchange utilising the golden opportunity from the booming international IT outsourcing business, a seminar in Dhaka made this observation on July 4. “Bangladesh has a golden opportunity of US $ 170 billion international market, but for that the country have to take proactive role to avail of such an opportunity,” Tony Brown, international trade adviser of UK Trade and Investment Department, told the seminar.

Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS) organised the seminar on ‘outsourcing opportunity in UK for software and IT services’ at the Bangladesh China Friendship Conference Centre. The seminar also identified negative image of Bangladesh in the world, linguistic barrier, separate time zones, dearth of educated IT experts and lack of specialisation as major obstacles to having a global market for the sector.

The size of global outsourcing business is $ 170 billion, of which around 60 per cent is IT outsourcing, Brown said in his keynote presentation in the seminar. The UK accounts for 79 per cent of total outsourcing business of the European Union and the market has shown 67 per cent growth in the 2006-07 financial year, he said. Suggesting the way of penetrating into the market, he said, “As Bangladesh is not familiar in the UK market as an IT exporting country, the interested persons here can arrange regular fairs in the UK”.

In the beginning, the country may not get good response, but continued effort will give Bangladesh a positive image as an IT service exporting country, he said. Addressing the seminar as chief guest, Faridul Hasan, director general of Export Promotion Bureau (EPB), said the government is organising fairs overseas to get rid of the image problem. Rafiqul Islam Rawly, acting vice president of BASIS, Kevin Ringham, director of Trade and Investment of British High Commission in Bangladesh, also spoke at the seminar.