Bangladesh has made it to the list of world’s top-30 IT services outsourcing destinations, securing a good grade in the labour cost category.
Gartner survey report 2010-2011 assured that this year for the first time Bangladesh got the place among the world's top- 30 IT services outsourcing destination along with 4 other countries including Bulgeria, Colombia, Mauritius and Peru.
This is ofcourse a good news for the country and the people related to IT sector, but the achievement came with some lacking. it came with a mix of poor and fair rankings in the rest of the 10 categories of Gartner’s survey 2010-2011.
Gartner, a global IT research and advisory firm, said in its report that Bangladesh received a good grade in labour cost category, while it was ranked poor in the categories of language, infrastructure, and data and intellectual property security and privacy.
The report also said Bangladesh was rated fair in the remaining six categories of government support, labour pool, educational system, political and economic environment, cultural compatibility, and global and legal maturity.
In the report titled ‘Analysis of Bangladesh as an Offshore Services Location, 2010’ it is cited that, Bangladesh offers an attractive cost proposition, given the low salary levels and low cost of living. If it is the situation then the employees are iexpensive to hire. the report analysis also marked that the income tax rates are moderate within the country.
‘Bangla is the official language of Bangladesh while the standard of English is low, and the requisite skills are lacking among students as well as teachers who are not well-equipped and well-trained.’ cited in the report. Here, in this category, Bangladesh got poor in the rating.
According to the analysis, the state of information and communication technology infrastructure in Bangladesh is unattractive, because the level of penetration of personal computers, communication lines, and Internet is very low and there is a high import duty on capital equipments for the telecoms industry. Here, in this category, Bangladesh also got poor in the rating.
About the country’s infrastructure, Gartner cited the World Economic Report of 2009 which put Bangladesh at 125th position out of 133 countries in terms of its quality of infrastructure.
According to the Gratner’s analysis of the country’s data and intellectual property security and privacy, ‘The regulations are not sufficient to cover areas of copyright or patent infringement. Awareness among citizens toward cybercrimes is not high, and there are few legal provisions to prevent the criminals.’ This situation put Bangladesh in this category into poor.
Gartner said, in April 2010, the country had 70,000 professionals working in the IT and BPO industry, including 15,000 IT engineers working at software companies.
About 5,000 students come out as ICT graduates every year in Bangladesh and about 55 per cent of its population are literate. The country’s National Education Policy 2010 also provides for introducing ICT studies at primary and secondary schooling levels and setting up of technical education institutions, the analysis mentioned. Fair enough for this category but not good, Just fair.
Gartner said, as per the International Monetary Fund, the country’s per capita income was $624 in 2010. The inflation rate in terms of consumer prices was 5.1 per cent in October 2009. And, according to the World Bank, Bangladesh was losing 2 to 3 per cent GDP growth a year to corruption. As a result, the country received fair ratings in six categories.
It is ofcourse a good news for the people of Bangladesh while world will get to know that Bangladesh can do it and the investment or work will increase. And as a result, the door to the big market will wide.
Like always, our state minister for science and ICT assured to address the shortcomings and promised that ministry will work to connect the country with the global submarine cable and set up a high-tech park and an ICT village.
He also said that the government also plans to adopt a cyber security policy and set up a cyber crimes tribunal. He said all these in a press conference yesterday held at the National Press Club organised by the Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services.
So, lets hope for the best. Dear state minister sir, I hope you will keep your promise and try your best to keep the position that Bangladesh achieved today.
Noted that, 9 countries from Asia Pacific got the place among the top-30 including Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, The Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam. Among all the 9 countries, India is leading in the offshore services and China is the greatest challenge in terms of potential scale.


//Source:

http://www.gartner.com/
Gartner's research and analysis of Bangladesh as an offshore servioces location, 2010

BASIS press release.