Basis SoftExpo promoting the next big leap

Basis SoftExpo promoting the next big leap

The largest ICT exhibition in the South Asian region, Basis SoftExpo 2023, will end in the capital on Sunday evening, leaving behind its ever shining marks in promoting the country’s biggest leapfrogging potentials in terms of grabbing the demographic dividends and export diversification, rightly addressed by the government through targeting a $5 billion export of IT and ITES products and services.
Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS) President Russel T Ahmed in exchange announced $20 billion export target by 2031 and gave a 3x3 formulae to achieve it.
“The story is all about the next big leap,” said Russel T Ahmed, the leader of the exhibition organiser.
The formulae include three sectors — the government, the industry and the academia working hand in hand, while three major tasks are product innovation, proper branding of the country and industry, and developing the human resource.
Over 350 of the BASIS members are now exporting IT and ITES to around 80 countries, up from 250 companies exporting to half of the market before the pandemic, according to BASIS.
The US market where 34% of Bangladesh’s IT and ITES exports are going nowadays has a shortage of around 3 million IT professionals, followed by the shortage of 1.5 million of the knowledge workers in the European Union, a million in the United Kingdom, 0.85 million in Japan.
The BASIS president is a bit on the optimistic side about the $5billion IT and ITES export target by 2025 as the Prime Minister and her ICT advisor are seriously guiding the sector.
Demand is there and it is only growing since the pandemic as the world’s companies are embracing IT more and more, said Ahmed.
He suggests complete collaboration among policy makers, industry and academia that is a must to fully unlock potentials.
Having the right master plan and the execution roadmap, branding the country and the industry should be the first task as the world’s buyers need to know Bangladeshi firms and their knowledge of workers’ capabilities, according to him.
Then there need to be investments in a right way that yields the maximum in terms of building capacity to compete with other countries.
IT and ITES, however, have emerged as the largest graduate job creator as the industry has already employed 0.15 million knowledge workers, while around 0.6 million are working as freelancers.
Every year, around 25 thousand IT graduates enter the industry but that is not enough for reaching the 2031 export goal, feels the BASIS President.
Right now, the workforce of 0.1 million is bringing $1 billion export income and the industry needs at least 1.5 million skilled people in 2031 to earn $20 billion.
ICT graduates in the pipeline alone are unlikely to fill the gap, which needs to be addressed in the interest of higher revenue tasks related to software and other high-end tasks.
The good thing is that a big workforce of non-ICT graduates also can be prepared for a better income from ICT and ITES-related work and support the industry target, said Russel T Ahmed.
Over 200 Bangladeshi firms are showcasing their IT and ITES products and services.
Starting at 10.00 am on 23 February at Bangabandhu Bangladesh-China Friendship Exhibition Center, Purbachal, in Dhaka the show and get together of thousands of ICT professionals is set to end at 8.00 pm on 26 February.
Besides so many awareness-creating events and thought provoking seminars every day, the exhibition comes live and engaging through the job fair, career camps, B2B matchmaking, freelancing conference, startup conference, developers’ conference, women in IT program, ministerial conference, and ambassadors’ night.