Freelancing Challenges In Bangladesh

The unique age demography of Bangladesh, coupled with the low-cost work force and government’s incentive for the IT service sector, makes Bangladesh a major player at the global outsourcing market. Bangladesh is fast emerging as the next major global outsourcing destination. Our Prime Minister has recently addressed to recognise the freelancer in the society as a profession. Freelancing has become quite popular in the modern world as an outsourcing job and Bangladesh has a good potential to cope with the freelancing job markets. Freelancing is a potential sector where any one can bag the job either in full-time or part-time considering his experience and know-how in the past. Freelancing jobs include everything from computer programming to web design, tax preparation, and search engine optimization. This has generated a wide range of new opportunities for people in emerging markets that did not previously exist. More than 500,000 freelancers are now working from their homes in Bangladesh for different global companies.
Rapid digitalisation and a high rate of educated unemployment have made Bangladesh the second largest exporter of online labour. Here, the Internet has created a global market for digitally delivered freelance work, which is currently growing rapidly. So, Bangladesh is doing quite well in freelancing job and secured the second most favourite country in supplying online labourers. This was revealed in a study of the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), a multidisciplinary research and teaching department of the University of Oxford.
The result of the study, published in the Oxford Internet Institute web site, put India ahead of Bangladesh and the United States on the third position. India as the largest overall supplier of online labourers shares 24% of the total global online workers followed by Bangladesh with 16% and the United States with 12%. Apart from the US, countries like Pakistan, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Russia, Italy and Spain are lagging behind Bangladesh.
Bangladesh is competing with India, Pakistan and some eastern European countries in freelance work, which definitely speaks of the high caliber of Bangladeshi IT professionals. If the government takes sufficient measures to train-up fresh graduates of the country, then the earning from the sector would increase manifold shortly. Initial earning of a person is not that much attractive but after gaining experiences in the field; one can earn more than any professional of Bangladesh. Freelancers earn $15 to $20 per hour on an average for technical work, and $5 to $10 for administrative or non-technical work. A new comer in the sector earns around $2 to $5 depending on type of job.
Currently, freelancers bring an estimated $100 million a year into the country. With the recent launch of the PayPal-owned service Xoom, many had expected that bringing earnings into Bangladesh would become much easier, but freelancers say it has not been able to achieve the expected result. In fact, many still opt to use PayPal accounts belonging to friends or relatives living abroad to get paid for their services and later have it transferred to local bank accounts. But freelancers in neighbouring India are able to enjoy all services offered by PayPal, including PayPal.Me’s unique service that allows users to send a custom link to request funds via text, email, or other messaging platforms.
Interestingly, one in every 10 of Bangladesh’s 44 million young people is unemployed, according to research by World Vision Bangladesh. Moreover, thousands of graduates who are finishing their studies at different public and private universities in Bangladesh are failing to find suitable positions in the job market each year. As a result, the rate of educated unemployment in the country is increasing exponentially. So, these young unemployed people can easily start their career by taking some IT training and freelancing online. By doing so, they not only make a living but also contribute to the economy by earning a salary in a valuable foreign currency.
Freelancers in Bangladesh are facing some difficulties and interestingly the biggest shortcoming is that most of the credit/debit cards of our country are not internationally recognised and accepted while inputs the freelancing sites and as a result, Bangladeshi freelancers have no access to create account in PayPal, Payoneer etc. i.e. Bangladesh faced problems with payment system used by freelance marketplace. Only for this reason, many promised talented freelancers can’t registered for freelancing job market in this competitive marketplace. Secondly, no comprehensive training program for the new freelancers through government initiative are available in our country, some individual initiatives are seen in the market but that is not available across the country, only Dhaka based. Thirdly, Freelancers must have good verbal and written communication skill in English to join in the freelancing market, some youngs have good academic background but they have no strong demonstrating support in English, as a result, they can’t cope with the global world even our neighbor India, Sreelanka. Fourthly, high speed internet as well as uninterrupted power supply is vital for growing freelancing job and business but that is not available in most of the local areas in Bangladesh. Lastly, freelancers have no social recognition and they feel discomfort in the society. One of the problems that freelancers often face while withdrawing money through their bank account is that many bank officials are not aware of the concept of freelancing.
As freelancing is a thrust outsourcing sector in job markets and have a good potentially, government should look into the above shortcomings pragmatically and take necessary steps to remove for the greater interest of the country.
(Mr. Rahaman is a banker and freelance contributor. zrbbbp@gmail.com)