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Commerce minister calls for investment in Bangladesh |
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News |
May 27, 2000 Dhaka, May 26 (UNB) – Commerce Minister Abdul Jalil invited investors from the Gulf to visit Bangladesh and choose the potential sectors for making investment in a secure environment. He made the call to prospective and potential investors from across different sectors of economy during a stopover in Dubai on Thursday on his way back to country from Brussels. While briefing the investors, the Minister mentioned some of the thrust sectors as well as the sectors open for private investment, particularly tiles and ceramics, tyres and tubes and fish. The investors present showed interest in these fields, said a message received here today (Friday). “Setting up of tube and tyre factories would be a gold-mine for the investors as there is no such factory in Bangladesh,” the minister told the meet. He told overseas investors that all the foreign investments in Bangladesh are protected by a law called “The Foreign Private Investment (Promotion and Protection) Act 1980”. “Under the act foreign investors are also protected against nationalisation and expropriation”. Besides, Bangladesh government has been offering attractive package of incentives and facilities for foreign investment. Some of these are tax holiday, concessionary duties on imported capital machinery, tax exemptions on royalties, on the interest on foreign loans, on income of the private sector power generation company for 15 years from the date of the commercial production as well as on income tax up to three years for the foreign technicians employed. The facilities also include full repatriation of invested capital, profits and dividends, duty-free access of capital machinery and spare parts. Existing facilities for bonded warehouse and back-to-back letter of credits will continue. Also among the facilities are remittance of profits to their head offices by foreign firms, annual foreign exchange retention quota of exporters, bilateral agreements for avoidable of double taxation. The Commerce Minister disclosed that Bangladesh export to the UAE showed tremendous increase during last three years. Export from Bangladesh to the UAE during the fiscal 1997-98 and 1998-99 was worth US $ 28.44 million and 19.76 million as against US $14.37 and 11.57 million during the fiscal year 1995-96 and 96-97. Moreover, during the first nine months of the current fiscal from July 1999 to March 2000 exports from Bangladesh fetched US $ 22.78 million against yearly target of 21.35 million. As regards performance, growth rate of exports was 37.32 per cent compared to the corresponding period of the last financial year. This growth rate is also higher than the national growth of 8.41 per cent. In terms of target, the above export figure exceeded the yearly target by 6.66 per cent.
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