Dhaka: Prime Minister's Information and Communication Technology Affairs Adviser Sajeeb Wazed Joy today expressed his confidence that the country would be able to create two lakh jobs every year from 2021 in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector.

‘Today's BPO industries require high number of employees every year. Both public sector as well as private sector could put their best efforts to take opportunity . . . The goal is by 2021, we will be producing 200,000 BPO jobs in Bangladesh every year,’ he said.

The observation came from the Premier's adviser on ICT while he was inaugurating a two-day BPO Summit, 2016 in Dhaka on Thursday.

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

Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) Chairman Dr Shahjahan Mahmood, Chairman of Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Ministry of Posts Telecommunications 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 thousand computer science graduates every year.

‘Many of our computer science graduates are joining Google, Facebook and Microsoft . . . their qualification are not less than international standard,’ he added.

Narrating the supports of the present government for local industry especially in BPO industry, he said the annual ICT expenditure of Bangladesh government has already exceeded one billion US dollar.

He said many activities of the country's agencies including National Board of Revenue (NBR) and local government are being done by outsourcing to local companies.

Describing the government success in IT sector the premier's ICT affairs adviser said 100 percent including Sundarbans has already become under mobile network of all mobile phone companies and the people of the country are making their daily life easy and comfortable through using ICT especially mobile phone.  

‘Today Bangladesh's everyone including people sitting in any remote village can get their university results through mobile phone, they can buy bus ticket through mobile phone, even health services information through their mobile phone,’ he mentioned.  

Expressing the hope that the country will achieve 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 raise and address a variety of issues that Bangladesh faces to emerge as a global outsourcing hub aligned with the Digital Bangladesh Vision 2021. It also paves the way for industry experts and clients to meet under a roof and exchange their ideas and thoughts for an enhanced vision and making new steps towards innumerable possibilities.  

Many speakers including more than 25 foreign speakers will share their knowledge and expertise in the seminars. There is facility of on-the-spot recruitment in the summit.