Women in ICT sector

Published : Saturday, 27 May, 2023 at 12:00 AM Count : 432

Farhana Naznin

There is no denying fact that the importance of ICT in women's empowerment is extremely significant. However it's a news to savour that Women's involvement in the ICT sector has also been increasing in recent times. In order to take the country forward in this age of globalisation, experts said, the ICT sector must be developed alongside other sectors. It will be a setback to women's empowerment if they don't enhance their skill in this sector. Moreover, the pandemic has emphasized the importance of ICT.

"To increase women's participation in the IT sector, we proposed to create a fund of at least Tk. 300 crore to provide loans to them at 2% interest and in order to increase the employment of women in the ICT sector, we proposed to provide government financial incentives of 10% of the monthly salary of female officers or employees employed by job creation software and IT companies, " Russell T Ahmed , president of BASIS said.

"On the other hand, to encourage online transactions, we proposed to provide cash incentives to both buyers and merchants at the rates of 3% and 2%, respectively. Besides, we also proposed the inclusion of Platform as a Service and Software as a Service in the definition of ITES but these issues were not taken into consideration in the budget. Although the government has taken up the plan to build a smart Bangladesh by 2041 with emphasis on the IT sector, declaring 2022 as the IT year product, in line with this, we have not seen any specific plan to increase private sector participation in the budget still the private sector in the IT sector has served as the backbone of the today's 465 billion US dollar economy in Bangladesh," he added.

Women in ICT sector

There was a proposal to impose a 15 per cent value-added tax (VAT) on the most essential equipment of the IT sector especially laptops, printers, toners etc. This will increase the cost for both traders and consumers in this sector. In this case, there should be a plan to multiply the production of domestic laptops by building an ecosystem for making laptops faster in the country, otherwise, the price of imported laptops may go up and the freelancers of the country may run out of purchasing power.

Russell said he hoped the government would consider the issues through budget discussions in a bid to boost the economic sector.

"More than a 50% of our total population in our are female and so, if we can make them skilled in IT sector, our economy will get a huge boost," he said.