Stories

European business delegation meet and match at SOFTEXPO 2012

12 March 2012
ITC News

In its effort to position Bangladesh as a global sourcing destination and to develop the country’s IT & IT-enabled services (ITES) exports, the International Trade Centre (ITC) regularly invites European businesses to visit the country and discover the local supply capacities. A 12-company strong delegation, composed of Danish, Dutch and UK IT SMEs, met with 70+ Bangladeshi companies during Dhaka’s largest IT fair, SOFTEXPO, from 21 until 26 February 2012.

200+ meetings were organized and several European companies have indicated they would send Bangladeshi companies trial assignments in the weeks to come. Business-linkage consultants will follow up for further details. As well as this, the Bangladeshi companies were pleased to notice that most of the European visitors actually had assignments to outsource in the short-term.

The visit received large media coverage and the Dutch Chargé d’Affaires, Mr. Carel Richter, the Bangladeshi Finance Minister, Mr. M. A. Muhit, Mr. M. Nazrul Islam Khan, Director of the A2i programme under the Prime Minster’s Office and Mr. Mahboob Zaman, President of BASIS, the Bangaldeshi IT association, attended the opening of the fair.

ITC presented the main findings of a KPMG whitepaper on Bangladesh’s IT & ITES industry to an audience of industry representatives and IT students during a seminar on “Outsourcing challenges and opportunities in the cloud ecosystem”. These findings are meant to support the marketing & sales strategy of local IT firms, as the country is favorably benchmarked on items such as cost, English education, and the number of IT & engineering graduates available on the market.

Participation in SOFTEXPO was organized as part of the NTFII Bangladesh project, which is funded by the Dutch Centre for the Promotion of Imports from Developing Countries (CBI) and implemented by ITC.