UNB, New York :Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Thursday called upon the US investors to invest Bangladesh in a greater way to tap the potentials the country has in various sectors and thus take the relations of the two countries to a newer height.”As we aspire to become a middle-income country by 2021, I call upon US investors to do more, invest more, benefit more from Bangladesh, create new business partnerships to take Bangladesh-US relations to a newer height,” she said.Hasina was addressing a luncheon hosted by American Chamber and American Business Council at Hotel Grand Hyatt. Distinguished members of Business Council for International Understanding (BCIU) and Distinguished Members of Bangladesh Business Delegation were present.Mentioning that the current US investment of $331 million in Bangladesh is much below its potential, she said there are some investments slowly building up in financial sectors apart from energy and power sectors. “Yet, we need more diverse group of US investors to take advantage of Bangladesh’s liberal investment policy.”She said her government has leapfrogged the liberal fiscal incentives for foreign investors, including a most generous tax holiday, concessionary duty on import of machinery, remittance of royalty, 100 percent foreign equity, unrestricted exit policy, a full repatriation facility of dividend and capital on exit and many more.”We’ve created 7 Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ), whereby foreign private companies can take lease of industrial land and set up labour intensive industry. We’ve an over 80-million young energetic workforce available for industrial recruitment as workers. We also have 160 million consumers as your market,” she added.Apart from power and energy sector, the Prime Minister said her government is keen on increasing FDI in its booming shipbuilding and recycling sectors, chemical fertilizers, automobile and light engineering, agro-processing, pharmaceuticals, ceramic, plastic and jute goods, ICT, marine resource extraction, tourism, medical equipment and telecommunication. The government is also giving more thrust on establishment of knowledge based hi-tech industries.She went on saying, “We’ve facilitated US companies such as the AES to be the pioneer of foreign private investment in the power and energy sector in Bangladesh. They launched the Haripur and Meghnaghat power plants and boosted the investment numbers by manifolds.During the past five years, the Prime Minister said her government pursued every possible avenue to enhance US direct investment in Bangladesh. From a meager $36.34 million in 2009, in two years time in 2011, Bangladesh secured $117.74 million worth of US investment. Between 2009 and 2013 total US investments in Bangladesh increased to the tune of $331.35 million.In 2014, the Prime Minister noted that the US still stands to be the second largest Foreign Direct Investor in Bangladesh. And yet this is still low considering its global investment scales. “I would personally want to see these numbers go past the billion-dollar mark within the next three years.”
