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Comment:

Reforms in education to boost BPO industry

The Government has declared the week October 9-15 as the 'National Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Week, thus emphasizing the Government's commitment towards ICT.

The main highlight of the 'Week' is Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). BPO market is growing at a rapid rate globally. Though it is an infant industry to us BPOs started in the late 1980s. BPO is a knowledge business. The essential ingredient of the industry is skilled manpower.

Knowledge is the capital as well as the inputs of the most of the high end BPO businesses. The BPO business range from call centres to software development. According to experts in the future anything that can be digitised will be outsourced to developing countries by developed countries. But all developing countries will not be able to attract BPO, because the country should be able to provide the outsourced service at the same quality the source country provides.

To sustain growth of BPOs in Sri Lanka all stakeholders should identify plus and minus points the country has. First the country should have knowledge, the human capital. Our universities emit thousands of graduates in various professions every year.

They are dumped into the already over-crowded State sector after several years of unemployment. Thousands of young people with university entrance qualifications, several times higher than the number who enter universities, are idling.

They do not fit into the existing labour market demand in manufacturing and agricultural sectors. Both categories of this educated people do not match with what the BPO industry requires because of the poor English language proficiency that almost all BPO companies are highly concerned about.

Quality and quantity of graduates passing out from universities and technical institutions have to improve to meet the BPO industry demand. The first solid step the country needs is change this education that produce a defective output.

It needs reforming the present education system, this does not mean simply privatising the education system but let private capital come into the education system, private-private collaboration in the university system as well as increasing government expenditure on education.

Higher general literacy rate alone will not fulfil the manpower demand by the BPO industry but it is the greatest advantage the country has over almost all developing countries.

To understand how this should be done we have to turn to India. Today India has gained from the education system they started just after the independence. In 1951 Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru set up India's first seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT).

Later their private sector equivalents and six Indian Institutes of Management were set up. Today India's capital of the BPO business is the graduates passed out from these institutes during the last 55 years.

Early generations of graduates of these institutes catered to the demand in the developed countries, mainly US. Those expatriate professionals with vast experiences returned and started BPO business in India to use the present output of these institutions. The English proficiency of Indian graduates is the other advantage the country has.

High literacy rate, tech savvy young people and people not second to none be it education or inventions are plus points we have. But something is lacking very seriously. That is unity. We should all unite be it the government, private sector, industry, associations, chambers must come together to formulate policy and act on it before it is too late as there is huge potential for us to tap.

In addition the country needs timely infrastructure such as low cost power, telecommunication facilities and office space to gain a sizable share of this market. As suggested the country could have BPO zones as done in Bangalore where the government supplies the infrastructure while the investors set up companies according to their requirement.

According to a survey carried out by ICTA the BPO industry in the country is not growing at the rate it was expected to grow. Investment flows into the sector have been relatively regular since 2000 and the inflow is a mix of foreign investments, local investments and joint ventures.

According to the survey eight companies have entered the BPO business last year but only one company has entered the industry this year. Some industry experts are optimistic of the future and predict that if Sri Lanka can secure 1.0% of the international BPO market in the next two to three years the country can earn US$ two billion by employing 200,000 staffers. To materialise this above issues have to be corrected quickly.

Increasing the e-literacy in the next essential requirement of the country.

ICT should not be a privilege to a elite few. Government effort in this regard is commendable.

"Nenasala" and 'Vidatha' regional computer centres provide IT services at lower price for average people.

 

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