New authority swings into action to make Bangladesh investment-friendly

The new state entity designed to draw investors has swung into action to make Bangladesh look a lucrative investment destination by 2021 when it aims to be a higher middle-income country.

As a first step, the Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA) in partnership with the World Bank Group will sit with all relevant ministries in a two-day strategic workshop from Friday at a Bahubal resort in the north-east Habiganj district.

This is to devise “action plans” on how to place Bangladesh among the top 100 countries in the World Bank’s 'ease of doing business' rankings in order to make it an attractive destination for global businesses.

“We have identified the problems and we also know solutions to those problems from the experiences of other countries. Now we need the action plan on how to solve those problems in our country,” Kazi M Aminul Islam, Executive Chairman of BIDA, told bdnews24.com.

The BIDA was formed through the merger of the Privatisation Commission and the Board of Investment last year,

“Every ministry will come up with their action plan in the workshop, and they will take on the responsibility to reach our target,” he said.

The workshop titled, “Improving Business Climate for Increased Private Investment in Bangladesh: Key Issues, Priorities and Strategies,” is expected to have participants from 58 government agencies.

It is divided into three key thematic sessions which will cover the issues and priorities related “to modernising the regulatory framework for businesses, facilitating private investment in industrial infrastructure and developing new sectors and strengthening overall investment and trade regime of Bangladesh”.

The World Bank has placed Bangladesh in the 176th position among 190 countries in its Doing Business 2017 report. Bangladesh was ranked 178 last year.

Despite gaining two spots, Bangladesh lags behind most other SAARC countries, managing only to overtake war-torn Afghanistan.

The study ranks the business environment of a country based on 11 indicator sets: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, resolving insolvency and labour market regulations.

Bangladesh has advanced one place in the registering property indicator and two places in the resolving insolvency indicator.

But it has plummeted seven places in starting a business, five in getting credit, one in protecting minority investors and three in paying taxes. The other indicator rankings have remained unchanged.

Now BIDA wants to push Bangladesh at least 76 places up in the index within 2020, when the Seventh Five-Year Plan draws to an end.

The executive director said they have “three challenges” ahead which are to implement 'Vision 2021' and 'Vision 2041' and to attain SDG targets. For all those, he said, “massive investment” would be needed.

“Those all are ambitious targets. We have to reach the target of becoming a developed country in 20 years after being a middle-income country. Many countries could not do that in 30 years.

“So, basically we have three challenges and to meet those challenges we’ll need massive ‘quality’ investment for sustainable development,” he said.

“So we need both local and foreign investments. We have to create investment climate which is defined by rules, regulations, laws and procedures and which will be supported by linkage activity such as education, skills development, infrastructure, energy and so on."

“We want such a climate that will send the message across the world that Bangladesh has done something for easing business,” he said while sharing his thoughts with bdnews24.com on Thursday night.

“The top countries in the World Bank's 'ease of doing business' rankings such as New Zealand and Singapore are our ‘model countries’ in our efforts to improve the investment climate,” he said.