Small businesses hold key to ICT development

Speakers at the seminar. PHOTO: PID

Venuprasad was speaking about a project, which was formally inaugurated through a seminar at the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission auditorium on June 6. Speakers at the seminar titled 'Development of Small Business ICT Strategies for Bangladesh' discussed the potentiality, problems and solutions faced by the ICT sector of the nation. A project attempted towards integrating the commercial and socio-economic advantages of ICT development for the nation has been undertaken.

Minister for Science and Information & Communication Technology, Dr Abdul Moyeen Khan chaired the seminar while Dr Omar Faruque Khan, secretary of the ministry was present as special guest and delivered the welcome address.

TIM Nurul Kabir, vice president, Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS) and Akhtaruzzaman Manju, president of the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) also spoke at the event.

Ram Venuprasad presented the keynote paper. "This project aims at assisting the Ministry of Science and Information & Communication Technology in developing and implementing a competitive ICT strategy toward developing the small and medium enterprises (SMEs)," he said.

The project is worth $150,000, which is equivalent to Taka 76 lakh and is being funded by the Commonwealth Secretariat. The project is likely to be implemented within the next nine months.

"Hopefully by March 2005, we should be able to implement the key factors of the project," said Venuprasad. The project would develop appropriate business opportunities, marketing plans and hopefully change operational policies of the Bangladeshi ICT sector, to aid the small and medium enterprises.

Through the project, international consultants would be training the industrial associations such as BCS, BASIS and ISPA. "Through such training, the knowledge, should be disseminated to the larger community," hoped Ram Venuprasad.

"With the increasing awareness and such promising projects funded by Commonwealth Secretariat and various other international agencies, the ICT sector, would soon be seeing brighter days," said Abdul Moyeen Khan while speaking at the seminar. With an example, the minister pointed out the vital importance of computers and software which is being felt by the even members at 'the grass-root levels' of the society, who had no such knowledge even a decade ago.

Later, at the meeting with the journalists, Venuprasad commended the efforts of the ICT ministry. "The ICT Incubator is extremely impressive with a very standardised working environment," he said. He also hoped that with the establishment of the proposed Hi-tech park, the ICT sector would finally possess the infrastructure required for its development.

"With the current potential, Bangladesh should have generated at least $32 million a year through outsourcing and other services, rather than its actual $3-4 million," he mentioned. He reasoned that this redundancy is due to the lack of an adequate marketing plan. "Hopefully with the completion of this project, Bangladesh would be standing firm with the marketing strategies that it always missed previously," he said.

The project manager also pointed out that with favourable results in this project, the ICT sector of Bangladesh might be the venue for a number of other such fruitful projects and ventures, in the near future.