Highlighting Bangladesh’s ICT sector as a rewarding destination for Japanese investors and entrepreneurs, the Bangladesh Software and Information Services Association (BASIS Senior Vice President Farhana A Rahman said the sector is ready to provide Japanese ICT entrepreneurs and investors.

She said that certain tax and non-tax incentives given to Japanese ICT entrepreneurs and investors by the Japanese government would speed up the investment process in Bangladesh by following current practices while Japanese investors invest in ASEAN countries.

She made the remark during the presentation of her speech during the webinar hosted by BASIS with the Japan Foreign Trade Organization (JETRO) today on “Bangladesh-Japan IT / ITES Industry Fraternity: Exploiting Business Opportunities and ‘investment”.

She said Bangladesh looks forward to the strong and proven economic and diplomatic relations with Japan, established in February 1972 and strengthened by the visit of the Father of the Nation of Bangladesh, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1973.

Since then, Japan has been Bangladesh’s largest bilateral development partner.

Speaking to the ICT industry fraternity that benefits Japan and Bangladesh, BASIS also observed Japan Day at SoftExpo 2019 and has been participating in Japan IT Week continuously since 2015, she informed. .

The webinar brought together representatives of about 100 leading Japanese ICT companies with the aim of understanding the trade and investment potentials of Bangladesh’s ICT sector.

Members of the BASIS Japan office also participated in the event with representatives of the BASIS secretariat and the JETRO Dhaka office.

Farhana A. Rahman further informed that Bangladesh has emerged as a globally competent outsourcing destination for IT / ITES, becoming the second largest provider of ICT outsourcing services such as image processing, customer support, software development, business handling and management outsourcing, including non-verbal outsourcing. BPO, Telemedicine, Medical Transcription, Custom Website Development, Mobile Application Development.

She added that the main force of Bangladesh’s ICT sector in product and technology fields is now booming in artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of things (IoT), warehousing and technology. Big Data analysis, Edu-Tech, the development of distributed ledgers, augmented and virtual realities. , solutions related to mobile financial services, e-commerce platform, application personalization and the web.

During the webinar, BASIS Director Rashad Kabir introduced the Bangladeshi ICT companies that are now working with cutting edge technologies in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Big Data Analytics, Internet of Things (IoT), augmented and virtual reality, web applications and custom software. mobile application, and he invited all interested Japanese ICT companies to communicate BASIS to find suitable counterparts here, if needed.

During his presentation, BJIT representative Yasuhiro Akashi said that Bangladesh can be seen as the next China and the next India by Japanese IT / ITES investors and offshore development partners, as Bangladesh is simultaneously geared towards English and Japanese offering human resources available at a very competitive rate which makes Bangladesh unique compared to Viet Nam, Philippines, Latin America and Myanmar.

In his closing remarks, the national representative of JETRO Yuji Ando wished JETRO and BASIS to look forward to working together to take the linkages between the ICT sectors of Japan and Bangladesh to the next level.

Rashad Kabir, director of BASIS Japan Desk, told The Business Standard that in order to expand the bilateral ICT relationship between Bangladesh and Japan, we launched BASIS Japan Desk last year, which is the first office discussion based in a country in the history of any commercial body. from Bangladesh.

Already more than 80 ICT companies are now members of BASIS Japan Desk.

“We have already received a positive response from our Japanese counterpart. A number of webinars and virtual B2B matchmaking sessions have already taken place. We expect that when the COVID situation improves, we can organize more. of physical matchmaking sessions and our businesses will be able to generate a lot more business from Japan, ”he said.

It was observed by participants that frequent congregations like this would renew the shared partnership and brotherhood of Japan and Bangladesh enabling regional economic integration in the years to come.