With 92 percent software piracy in Bangladesh, the first in the Asian Pacific region and the second highest in the world, the country’s experts urged the government to initiate a move for use of open sources software.

A report, Global Software Piracy Study 2008, published in 2009 and conducted by IDC, the IT industry’s leading global market research and forecasting firm, warned that the software piracy in Bangladesh is crippling the local industry and costing the local retailers US$102 million a year.The report revealed that the worst offender is Georgia at 95 percent. It’s followed by Armenia and Zimbabwe at 92 percent while the US is the country with the lowest piracy rate at 20 percent. Then follow Japan and Luxembourg at 21 percent each.

In Bangladesh the piracy rate actually remain same at 92 percent for last two years. The report’s data measure piracy for all of 2008 and do not include data from 2009.

State Minister for Science and ICT Yeafesh Osman, Prof Dr Muhammad Zafar Iqbal, and Science and ICT secretary AKM Abdul Awal were, among others, present at the seminar chaired by BCC executive director M Mahfuz Rahman. A2I Programme Implementation Specialist Munir Hasan and Deputy Director of WTO Cell at the Commerce Ministry Sharifa Khan presented two papers at the seminar.

State Minister for Science and ICT Yeafesh Osman said the government would take all possible initiatives to incorporate latest technology and remove the obstacles to getting maximum ICT services.