TO smoothly run the wheel of economy of a developing country like Bangladesh Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is considered to be one of the important determinants, which can help enhance the economic growth.
Sadly, Bangladesh has been ranked as the third worst-performing country in the world in terms of attracting the “Greenfield FDI”, according to a global ranking report of the FDI Intelligence.
In another report, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said the value of Greenfield investment project – an indicator of future foreign direct investment trend – fell by 78 per cent in Bangladesh in the first eight months of 2020 because of the pandemic.
On the other hand, the World Bank in its 2020 “Doing Business” ranking, said Bangladesh ranked 168th out of 190 economies. The country suffers from a negative image and is seen as being extremely poor, under-developed, subject to devastating natural disasters and socio-political instability.
Media reports in a national daily on Saturday said Bangladesh has scored 0.31 and it has 18 Greenfield FDI projects as of 2020. A score of 1.0 indicates a country’s share in global inward Greenfield FDI matches its relative share of global GDP. A score greater than 1.0 indicates a larger share than indicated by its GDP and a score of less than 1.0 indicates a smaller share, according to the ‘Greenfield Performance Index-2020’.
Experts think there are scopes for attracting foreigners to re-invest in our manufacturing sector like apparels. However, Bangladesh had been in a negative state even before the pandemic hit the country, though it was positive in other Asian countries.
It is to be noted that among the foreign investors in Bangladesh, China stood at the leading position in fiscal 2019 followed by the Netherlands, the UK, Singapore, USA, Hong Kong, Norway and India. Japan in recent years started shifting its investments from China and seeking relocation, favouring Bangladesh.
The few bureaucrats as political genius made Bangladesh successfully a failed country by smashing the government machinery. We are hoping for a sensible change before they fled the country. They took full advantage of weak political leadership. What is most shameful is our educated are too opportunistic for no good.
