New entrepreneurship plan in the wings

Pramit Reza, secretary, BASIS speaking at the conference.

Among others, speaking at the ceremony were Md. Hasan-Uz-Zaman Dipu (the CEO of CGD), Sudipta Rakib and Onirban Ghosh, both of whom are instructors from India for CGD, as well as Fahim Mashroor, CEO of the job portal Bdjobs.com.

Md. Hasan-Uz-Zaman gave an overview of E-Accounting and the challenges and prospects involved in implementing it in Bangladesh. Speaking on the financial benefits he said, "An e-Accounting bookkeeper can generate upto US $ 10,000 export per year vis-à-vis US$ 1500 export per year by a garments factory employee, so with an initial investment of Tk 40 lakhs a company can expect to generate a revenue around US $ 2,00,000."

"E-accounting," he said, "is preferable for a country like Bangladesh for numerous reasons". The reasons he cited were the time differences with North American countries, efficient working force at lower costs and availability of unemployed skilled and semi-skilled commerce and IT professionals.

The barriers to overcome, according to Zaman, are absence of IT policy, low English communications skills, unreliable and costly internet service, skepticism in IT investments, absence of standard legal International contracts etc. He suggested that these factors be addressed by taking appropriate measures such as installing fiber optic internet connectivity, ensuring smooth transfer of foreign currency and embassy initiatives to legalize International contracts.

Sudipta Rakib and Onirban Ghosh gave an account of their experiences in e-Accounting from the perspective of their country. According to Ghosh, even though e-Accounting is a new concept in India as well, they have around 30-40 certified firms engaged in providing such services and everyday there are new-comers joining the business. Rakib said he was very much encouraged by the interest and response shown by the trainees over here and was confident that they will perform well.

Fahim Mashroor congratulated CGD for their courageous venture as pioneers in a lesser-known outsourcing concept. Terming Business Process Outsourcing as the last hope for Bangladesh he said, "E-Accounting can be developed using basic technology and accounting skills and is thus a good option for Bangladesh as expert workforce for both departments are available."

E-Accounting allows business organisations to keep their financial data and applications in a safe and secure environment, providing easy access to permitted users regardless of their location or local computing platform. The concept is that a US company hires an agent company for performing their accounting processes who then in turn contracts a local agent in another country for the job. Therefore at a periodic interval (daily/weekly) a scanned image or pdf file of the transaction will be transferred to the local agent, via the US-based agent. Through the use of a 'Virtual Desktop', which is located on some server on the net supporting the Accounting software, professionally certified Bookkeepers (from Bangladesh, for example) will perform the necessary online accounting procedures. CGD will be using Quick Book Pro, a remotely installed software, said to have user friendly interfaces, compatibility with other software and versatility to support the accountancy procedures of different countries. CGD is the first among its peers to adopt this outsourcing business in Bangladesh.