Bangladesh has carved its place among the world’s best destinations for IT outsourcing, largely thanks to its low cost, according to a study by a leading research and consulting firm.
Bangladesh usually offers an attractive cost proposition for the investors, as its low salary level and low-cost of living are ideal for jobs that are commoditised and have low risk, said the study conducted by Gartner in its annual listing of top countries for IT outsourcing globally.
“Bangladesh is an emerging country from an offshore location perspective, but ranks poorly in language, infrastructure and data and intellectual property security,” the research said.
“Although it offers a good cost proposition, the government has to address many issues such as education, infrastructure and data security or IP protection in order to propel the top ranks,” said Gartner, which has put Bangladesh on its list of top 30 destinations for global IT outsourcing for 2010-11.
This is the first time that Bangladesh has been listed in the top ranking by any global research company on IT outsourcing and has been placed on par with China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam in Asia.
“The achievement is significant given the growing potential of Bangladesh as an attractive IT outsourcing destination,” said Mahboob Zaman, president of the Bangladesh Association for Software and Information Services (BASIS), at a press conference in the capital yesterday.
“However, it would require proper government policy support in addressing the shortcomings identified in the study to keep up the same rating,” he added.
Bangladesh has debuted in the list along with eight other countries that have made it for the first time to the Top 30 of the Gartner ranking.
“The country offers an attractive cost proposition, given its low salary levels and low cost of living,” said the study, which took into account ten separate criteria for rating the individual destinations.
The criteria include language, government support, labour pool, infrastructure, educational system, cost, political and economical environment, cultural compatibility, global and legal maturity as well as data and Intellectual Property Security and Privacy.
Bangladesh has been ranked ‘very good’ in the criteria of cost, according to the Gartner findings while rating ‘fair’ in all criteria apart from the areas of language, infrastructure and data and IP security and privacy.
Noting that Bangladesh’s cost of living is one of the lowest in the world, the report found that the median salary per annum of a software engineer or developer in Bangladesh is about $5,070, while the median salary of a senior software engineer is $7,300 and that of an IT manager is $9,734.
“In recent years, the government has taken several bold steps in boosting the country’s IT industry, which has been partly reflected in this rating,” said State Minister for Science and ICT Yeafish Osman.
“Most recently, the office of electronic signature certifying authority has been set up for authorising a digital signature system, while a cyber security policy is going to be formulated and cyber tribunals are going to be formed to address the cyber crime issue,” he added.
The Gartner report finds the country’s PC penetration and teledensity ‘low’ and the overall English language competency ‘poor’ while stating that the essential infrastructure elements such as electricity, airways and rail networks are not up to the global standard.
