DHAKA, Nov. 7 (Xinhua) -- Bangladesh has been found to have a software piracy rate of 92 percent, which is number one in the Asian Pacific region and the fourth highest in the world, local newspaper The Daily Star reported Wednesday.

    A report, Global Software Piracy Study 2006, 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 local retailers 90 million U.S. dollars a year.

    The report shows that 92 percent of software used on personal computers in Bangladesh had been pirated in 2006. This means that for every dollar worth of software purchased legitimately, nine dollars worth was obtained illegally.

    The high software piracy rate has resulted in 90 million dollars in retail revenue losses to the local Bangladesh software economy.

    However the report says that the broader economic impact of software piracy is significantly greater.

    "Among the many negative consequences of software piracy is the crippling of local software industries because of competition with pirated software, lost tax revenues and decreased business productivity from using unwarranted software," the report said.

    Bangladesh has a Copyright Act, under which piracy is a punishable with imprisonment for a term, which may be extended to five years and may be imposed a penalty of 500,000 taka (about 7,143 dollars)

    The IDC global software piracy study covers piracy of all packaged software that runs on personal computers, including desktops, laptops and ultra-portables. This includes operating system, system software, business applications and consumers applications.