BASIS on Thursday held a lively webinar on trade and investment prospects in the ICT sector of Bangladesh. Representatives of the top 100 Japanese companies took part in it. The webinar organized by BASIS with Japan External Trade Organization was also attended by BASIS Japan Desk listed members, representatives of BASIS Secretariat and JETRO Dhaka Office. Japanese investors and entrepreneurs who took part in the meeting expressed interest.
Farhana A. Rahman, Senior Vice President, BASIS, said that Bangladesh’s fast-growing IT / ITES sector is ready to open the door to new possibilities for Japanese ICT entrepreneurs and investors.
Presenting the keynote address at the event, he said Japanese investment in information technology and services in Bangladesh would increase significantly if Japanese ICT entrepreneurs were encouraged to follow the same financial and non-financial incentives provided by the Japanese government when Japanese investors invest in ASEAN countries.
He further said that the strong economic and diplomatic relations between Bangladesh and Japan, which were established in February 1972, were further accelerated by the 1973 visit of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Since then, Japan has been Bangladesh’s largest bilateral development partner. Japan and Bangladesh also celebrated Japan Day at BASIS SoftExpo 2019 highlighting the brotherhood of the ICT industry and Japan has been participating in IT Week continuously since 2015.
Farhana A Rahman said that IT/ITES has emerged as a capable global outsourcing destination for image processing, customer support, software development, business processing and management outsourcing BPO, telemedicine, mobile transcription and so on. He further added that the key strengths of Bangladesh’s ICT sector in products and technology are now artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), big data warehousing and analysis, edu-tech, augmented and virtual realities, mobile financial services, e-commerce platforms, Apps and web customization solutions.
Rashad Kabir, Director, BASIS, introduced Bangladeshi ICT companies who are now working on state-of-the-art technology in the areas of artificial intelligence, big data analysis, Internet of Things (IoT), AR and VR, web applications and customized software. He invited the Japanese ICT businessmen to communicate with BASIS who are interested.
BJIT Representative Yasuhiro Akashi said in his presentation that Bangladesh could be considered as the next destination after China and India for Japanese IT/ITES investors and offshore development partners as Bangladesh simultaneously provides skilled human resources skilled on English and Japanese languages which is much more than Vietnam, Philippines, Latin America and Myanmar.
Yuji Ando, Bangladesh Representative of JETRO, said in his closing remarks that JETRO and BASIS look forward to working together to take the relationship between Japan and Bangladesh’s ICT sector to the next level.
Participants commented that such webinars would develop the partnership and brotherhood between Japan and Bangladesh that would enable regional economic integration in the years to come.