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Two-day ICC Asia conference concludes in Dhaka

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November 12, 2000 

Dhaka-- (UNB) - Limited market access is one of the weaknesses of Bangladesh in getting more foreign direct investment it needs to build infrastructures and come out of the poverty trap, according to an investment guide released here yesterday.

Limited market with low purchasing capacity, unclear access to South Asian market, low productivity because of poor labour skills, highly bureaucratic public sector and weak infrastructure are the weaknesses of Bangladesh, said the UNCTAD-ICC guide.

An UNCTAD official, who attended the launching of the guide at Sonargaon Hotel last (Saturday) afternoon, called for an integrated Asian market like that in other regions, to ensure investors a wider market.

Among other things, market is also a vital factor to bring in investment, said Pedro Roffe, the inter-regional advisor of the Geneva-based UN trade body.

Maria Livanos Cattaui, secretary general of the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), released the guide at the end of the two-day ICC Asia conference in the city.

The guide, third of its kind after Ethiopia and Mali, is aimed at projecting a comprehensive investment scenario of Bangladesh to business firms that look for new locations.

Bangladesh is the only Asian country included in the UNCTAD’s project for producing investment guides, initially for five countries.

International business policymakers, who attended the launching of the guide, said Bangladesh’s political stability, homogeneity, investment policies and incentives are good for investment.

But slow implementation, poor infrastructures, cumbersome bureaucracy and red-tape stand in the way of overseas investments, they pointed out.

Natural gas, electricity, telecommunications, textiles and leather, jute goods, fisheries and food and information technology are the areas of opportunity in Bangladesh, as identified by the guide.

It also indicated the facilities for doing business here and incentives offered for overseas investors, regulations and markets.

The ICC secretary general said: “Bangladesh has enough scopes to attract FDI…But red-tape, cumbersome bureaucracy, inadequate transportation and lack of transparency need to be addressed.”

She also mentioned Bangladesh’s vibrant private sector and passive natural resources that can be catalysts to foreign direct investment.

Bangladesh’s good investment policies are yielding results, she said.

Explaining the objectives of the just-concluded ICC-sponsored Asia conference, Cattaui said the mission was to look for how developing countries can get maximum advantages from the global economy to better their own economies.

Pedro Roffe said the guide would reduce the long-felt information gap by providing an objective, credible and balanced statement of prospects and weaknesses of investing in Bangladesh.

Appreciating Bangladesh’s liberal investment policies, the UNCTAD official said FDI flow rose up to over US$300 million in late 1999 from a meagre amount in ‘80s. Bangladesh’s cheap labour offers good scope for investment in labour-intensive manufacturing sector.

Financial and non-financial incentives, homogeneity, political stability, low labour cost and pro-private sector policies are among the opportunities for making investment in Bangladesh, he cited.

On the other hand, he felt, physical infrastructures, administrative complexities and lack of skilled manpower should be seriously looked into while the remaining gap between policies and implementation minimised.

Board of Investment (BOI) executive chairman M Mokammel Haque said Bangladesh’s investment policies by far are the best in the whole region.

“But at the same time, we recognise our problems,” he said, particularly mentioning the shortage in energy generation and poor port services.

“Chittagong port is a well-known bottleneck. We’re all fed up,” he said, attaching government’s full attention to better the infrastructure facilities for investors.

The BOI chief executive felt that relocated investments from Asia are more likely to come in here than that from USA or Europe.

ICC-Bangladesh Chapter president Mahbubur Rahman said the government should act right now to overcome the weaknesses identified by investors and turn those into strengths to survive the fierce competition in global economy.

Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI) president Latifur Rahman and Executive Director of Centre for Policy Dialogue Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya also spoke at the press conference.