A national daily reported on Tuesday that Bangladesh needs administrative reform and must give increased incentives to leverage the shifting global supply chain such as multinationals companies (MNCs) now planning to relocate their manufacturing facilities out of China to avoid impact of US-China trade war and Covid-19 fear.
But as reports said Bangladesh lacks the preparedness to attract a bigger slice of this investment when regional competitors such as India, Indonesia and Vietnam are far ahead of us to lure MNCs to their countries. It is indeed not good news for Bangladesh as it lacks stability and suffers from serious law and order situation under a dysfunctional government to lure big investments.
Investors always look for attractive and peaceful investment climate. But it is unfortunate that our country lacks targeted business promotion and rather slipped out in recent years in the global business index. On the other hand many of our competitors which were behind us have already jumped ahead of us.
In 2010 Bangladesh held 118 positions in global business index while India stood at 139 and Vietnam at 90. In 2019, our position degraded to 168 despite we talk loud, whereas India moved upward to 63 and Vietnam to 70. As it appears we are about to miss to capitalize on the best opportunities at a time we badly need new businesses to provide jobs and income generating activities to our growing work force. But Bangladesh essentially lacks the ability and administrative reforms that investors demand while it also remains highly divided politically which is not helpful to win investors confidence. We also lack locally available skilled manpower which we must train if we were to lure them.
Police arrest, lack of freedom of speech and shunning political opposition are similarly not helpful to for a stable business climate. A government based on false propaganda and narrow political platform is basically unable to implement meaningful administrative reforms. So even if policy makers take decision to improve rules such as procedure for business registration or utility connection, it fails at field level.
Let the government try to attract MNCs to relocate in Bangladesh and that will be success.
