Don't squander our IT export potential

Bangladesh has witnessed an impressive growth in the export of IT-related services and products recently. Two years ago, our IT export earnings crossed the half-billion mark. This is proof that this sector has enormous potential which, if utilised properly, can earn us a huge amount of foreign exchange. However, the pace of this growth seems to have slowed down. According to the latest data from the Export Promotion Bureau, the first month of the current fiscal year (2023-24) saw a 3.37 percent year-on-year growth in IT exports. That means, our July 2023 exports fell short of the strategic growth target of 12.63 percent that the government had set for the month.

Sector insiders say this could be the result of a decline in work orders since companies around the world had to downsize their costs on technologies due to the ongoing economic crisis. This appears to be a continuation of the dip seen in our export earnings last year. Reportedly, our IT exports slipped in FY2023 for the first time in five years, the earnings shrinking by 7.42 percent, failing to reach the government's target of $597 million for the year.

This may be just a blip in the journey of our IT export growth. But we do urge the authorities to look into ways to reverse the growth trajectory right away, especially if they want to meet the government's IT export earning target of $5 billion by 2025. We know that the government has a number of initiatives underway to facilitate the growth of the sector. Those initiatives may require a re-assessment, and new initiatives may be needed to get us back on track. We urge our policymakers to start working to this end post-haste. We also must expand the range of high-quality services to offer to the world. More importantly, the government must invest into developing a high-skilled IT workforce that can not only provide world-class services to companies overseas, but to businesses at home as well.