The IT sector in Bangladesh produces over 3,000 professionals a year and the country is planning to set up its own Silicon Valley in a few years, said a top Bangladeshi IT professional and head of its IT association.

During the 1990s, Bangladesh witnessed mushrooming of IT training institutes, which initially concentrated on training students on the basic software packages, MS Office and related utilities. However, a lot of organisations are now venturing into specialisation.

Though the country has a long way to go in order to become a digital economy, it is in the process of awakening.

Bangladesh is yet to have its own domain name, which reflects the awareness level of Bangladeshi leadership. The young Bangladeshi students and entrepreneurs, however, are not waiting for their country's politicians to show the way. They, in turn, are educating their leaders by bringing in fresh ideas.

"Recently, I suggested to Prime Minister Khaleda Zia to rename the Ministry of Science and Technology to ICT Ministry. At the annual IT exhibition, she finally agreed and declared the change, which reflects a fresh attitude that is sure to bring in a lot of changes. If things work out, then we would like to set up our own silicon valley to spur the sector's growth," said M. Sabur Khan, president of Daffodil Institute of Information Technology (DIIT) and president of Bangladesh Computer Samity (BCS), a trade body of all the IT companies of Bangladesh.

"Our annual IT exhibition attracted 200,000 trade visitors and 50,000 students from different schools and colleges this year," he said.

BCS is a representative organisation of 300 IT companies, out of 1,000 active in the field. The Computer Exhibition is the single largest trade exhibition after Dhaka International Trade Fair held every year. Sabur Khan was a member of a 14-member investment delegation that toured the UAE last week to source foreign investment for Bangladesh.

"We now produce over 3,000 IT professionals a year, out of which over 600 can be compared to any qualified IT professionals from the West. Most of our IT companies are still into offering general and specialised training, though there are a good number of IT companies ventured into software designs and solutions. Some companies are into hardware assembling of PCs, though no-one is into semi-conductor manufacturing yet," said Khan, who set up his business in 1991 with two PCs and a mere cash of Btk 50,000.

In January this year, he set up Bangladesh's first university with an aim to produce quality IT professionals for world market.

"Bangladesh has a bright prospect to become a software hub in South Asia. We have very good software professionals and most IT students are becoming software professionals, instead of going into hardwares.

"Most Bangladeshi business organisations and government institutes are sourcing software solutions from the internal market where our engineers are offering good business solutions to the industry and our community.

"Bangladeshi software engineers have been doing well in the West, especially in the U.S. I have some of my students in the U.S. Silicon Valley who are doing extremely well. However, to bring in a drastic change and revamp the sector, we need solid cash injection in the sector."

Currently, the government is working on to establish a fibre-optic link with the world via Singapore. A tender is underway for the project, which, after implementation, will enhance the country's broadband connectivity. Bangladesh is yet to plan for e-governance project as a vast portion of the country is not wired or doesn't have electricity supply.

However, it's previous government has set up a comprehensive website and enriched it during its tenure (1996-2001) with adequate contents timely updated. This might work as a backbone to its future e-government plan.

Due to the government's lack of timely understanding and realisation, Bangladesh's national telecom authority, Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB), has failed to cash on the mobile telecom revolution that took place in the later part of the '90s. It has also failed to become an ISP as of now.

However, private sector organisations filled in time to save the IT and mobile telecom sector in the '90s and now most of its urban population are benefiting from private ISPs and telecom operators.