4th BPO Summit begins today

A two-day event on business process outsourcing (BPO) is set to begin in Dhaka today with a view to presenting the local and international markets' prospects before the country's digital industry.

The Directorate of ICT (DoICT) under the Information Communication Technology Division in association with the Bangladesh Association of Call Centre and Outsourcing (BACCO) will organise the event at the Pan Pacific Sonargaon hotel.

Some 40 local and 20 international analysts are expected to attend the BPO Summit, the fourth of its kind.

The event will be inaugurated by Prime Minister's ICT Affairs Adviser Sajeeb Wajed Joy. Ministers, senior officials and experts will also attend the programme as discussants, said the organisers at a press conference at the premises of the ICT division on Thursday.

The industry as a whole expects to earn $1 billion by 2021 from exports and employ more than one lakh youth within the next two years, said Wahidur Rahman Sharif, president of the BACCO. “And this is what we want to present before the enthusiastic youths at the summit.”

To make the event successful, the BACCO also signed deals with different ICT-related trade bodies and held engagement campaigns in different universities over the last few days.

The government has targeted to earn $3 billion from the ICT sector by 2021 and BPO can contribute $1 billion to the sum, Sharif added. By the end of 2018, the industry had employed about 45,000, according to the BACCO.

Terming the BPO industry as a “very promising sector”, Zunaid Ahmed Palak, state minister for ICT, said the BPO industry has already created 30,000 new jobs in the market, which the government plans to increase to two lakh by 2021.

At the press conference, ICT Secretary NM Zeaul Alam, DoICT Director General ABM Arshad Hossain, and BACCO General Secretary Towhid Hossain also spoke.