The government has initiated a big move to implement a Taka 4,347.21 crore project to develop the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Shilpa Nagar (BSMSN) as a state of the art and international standard greener economic zone of the country.
Bangladesh Economic Zones Authority (BEZA) under the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) will implement a project to this end titled “Development of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Shilpa Nagar” with an overall estimated cost of Taka 4,347.21 crore.
“Of the total project cost, Taka 3,967.47 crore will come from the World Bank as project loan while the rest of Taka 379.74 crore from the Government of Bangladesh portion,” said a senior Planning Commission official.
The project will be placed before the meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) today. ECNEC Chairperson and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will preside over the meeting.
BEZA will implement this project by December 2025, in order to create an enabling environment for sustainable private investment and a dynamic local market for industrial land. Talking to BSS, BEZA Executive Chairman Paban Chowdhury said the project mainly aims to ensure infrastructural development of various zones including Zone 2A and Zone 2B of BSMSN and thus creating private investment friendly environment there.
Besides, he said, it also aims to turn this BSMSN as a green economic zone as well as creating new employment opportunities through attracting necessary investment. The project will be implemented by December 2025 at Mirersarai in Chattogram.
The BEZA chief said that the project also aims to attract local and foreign investment, ensuring speedy industrialization as well as product diversification, boosting export earnings and thus creating scope for earning valuable foreign currency.
Besides, once the project is implemented, there will be huge employment opportunities including for women which will also play a supporting role in further alleviating poverty, he added. Paban Chowdhury informed that BEZA has already received investment proposals amounting to over US Dollar 20 billion from over 127 local and foreign business entities for the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Shilpa Nagar (BSMSN).
He said beyond these investment proposals, many world-renowned foreign companies are coming with big investment offers.
Under the project, BEZA will construct a 30-kilometre road inside the BSMSN alongside other necessary infrastructures such as a central effluent treatment plant, desalination plant, solar energy systems, solid waste management, biogas plant, waste sorting facility, rooftop and floating solar.
Besides, there will be necessary land development, necessary site upgradation, constriction of one investor club and one stop service (OSS) center, one emergency response center, one skills development center, sanitation and water supply network along with telecommunications network, power network, gas pipeline network, environmental lab and monitoring system.
The BSMSN will be the country’s first public economic zone to go into operation as a part of the government’s plan to set up 100 industrial enclaves across Bangladesh.
The BSMSN is taking shape day by day as investors have started developing the physical infrastructure of the 30,000-acre economic zone.
