Exploring IT freelancing potentials

A MEDIA report said on Sunday that the government launched the ‘Freelancers to Entrepreneurs Development Programme’ in all 64 districts simultaneously aimed at developing entrepreneurship for outsourcing. It’s a good move to create IT professionals in the country. Bangladesh could earn around $1 billion in exports per year from IT freelance services within the next decade. A non-formal business sector– namely freelancing, through intensive use of the Internet super highways and by mobilizing highly proficient manpower, can bring fortune to many young people using IT now both for jobs and amusement. The freelancers work using their skill and efficiency without any formal time frame but are subjected to a time schedule to deliver the goods. The new service sector opens a gainful engagement opportunity for educated youths—both male and female, including students. As freelancer projects with one or more employers, brings more income to those who can do more work on a contractual basis than others. It is presumed that if the government provides the necessary policy support, the country will be able to grab at least 1 percent of the global freelance market which is now around $100 billion per year. According to the State Minister for IT, Bangladesh now earns over $200 million a year from export of IT based freelance services and the government has undertaken a project to add 50,000 freelancers to a horde of an already existing 200,000 to expand the scale of operation and their growing presence in the global IT market. We share the experts’ views at the same time that all stakeholders in this sector must be mobilized to cover the wide range of service demands beyond that of just IT expertise in the narrow sense. The training must include talented manpower from music, journalism, publishing, screenwriting, filmmaking, acting, photojournalism, cosmetics, editing, event planning, and a host of events to meet global demands as it grows beyond limits in different sectors.The most important challenge in this area of business is appropriate development of IT infrastructure, language skills and data and protection of intellectual property rights. Slow and unreliable internet connections must be replaced by high speed IT infrastructure and power supply support must be ensured without frequent outages taking place. Money transactions in web-based businesses is still considered a big problem while dealing with international service windows. We ask the central bank to provide the necessary guideline to this effect to all commercial banks to put in place a standard practice for receiving the service fees. It may also offer wage earners benefits to freelancers in this case. Foreign missions abroad can also play a significant role in expanding freelance contacts by helping to exploring new markets abroad. We have confidence in the high calibre of our IT professionals who are competing with India, Pakistan and some East European nations while both retaining their position and steadily expanding the market . We suggest that the government may frame a far reaching development strategy in this respect and support it with effective action plans to achieve the greater market access for IT freelancers at the global level. The private sector and the government must work hand in hand to provide support to IT freelancing personnel to realize the expected growth in this business within the shortest possible time.