Two lakh jobs every year in BPO sector from 2021: Joy

Bangladesh will be able to create two lakh jobs every year from 2021 in the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, the prime minister's ICT affairs adviser, said yesterday.

"Today's BPO industries require higher number of employees every year. Both the public and private sectors could put their best efforts to take the opportunity . . . The goal is, by 2021 we will be producing 200,000 BPO jobs in Bangladesh every year," he said.

Joy was inaugurating a two-day BPO Summit at Sonargaon hotel in Dhaka.

Organised by the ICT Division with assistance of the Department of ICT and Bangladesh Association of Call Center and Outsourcing, the function was presided over by State Minister for ICT Affairs Zunaid Ahmed Palak.

Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission's Chairman Shahjahan Mahmood, Chairman of Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Ministry of Posts Telecommu-nications and Information Technology Ministry Imran Ahmad and ICT Secretary Shyam Sunder Sikder addressed the function, among others.

Joy said digital Bangladesh is not a dream as around 65 percent of the country's population are youth and the country is producing more than 10,000 computer science graduates every year.

"Many of our computer science graduates are joining Google, Facebook and Microsoft," he added.

He said the annual ICT expenditure of Bangladesh government has already exceeded $1 billion.

Describing the government's success in the IT sector, he said the people of the country are making their daily life easy and comfortable by using ICT, especially mobile phone.

"Today everyone including people sitting in any remote village can get their university results through mobile phone; they can buy bus ticket through mobile phone, and even health services information through their mobile phone," he added.

Expressing the hope that the country will achieve the upper middle income status by 2021, he said Bangladesh has achieved remarkable success in many socio-economic indicators than all South Asian countries including India and Sri Lanka.

He also said the government has taken an initiative to set up ten IT training centres across the country to support BPO industry and supply IT experts.

The summit agenda has been carefully crafted to address a variety of issues that Bangladesh faces to emerge as a global outsourcing hub aligned with the Digital Bangladesh Vision.

More than 25 foreign speakers will share their knowledge and expertise in the seminars on the sidelines of the summit. The event also offers on-the-spot recruitment.