ECONOMISTS opted for merging the Bangladesh Economic Zones Authority (BEZA) and the Bangladesh Export Processing Zones Authority (BEPZA) with each other as both are carrying out same types of tasks. Both the government-sponsored investment facilitators are helping domestic and foreign investors in setting up factories in Bangladesh and are also operating under the Prime Minister’s Office. Quoting researchers, news media recently reported that the merger is important because sometimes the government gives separate policies though both the bodies are doing the same jobs. To break the bottlenecks of sluggishness of investment and export, the merger may bring positive news to the local and international investors and the management cost would be reduced.
In the country, there are eight EPZs run by the BEPZA while the BEZA is working to develop more than 100 special economic zones in different districts to attract investment from home and abroad. Between 1983-84 and 2014-15, local employment in the EPZs increased by an average of 19 percent per annum. The contribution of the EPZs in new job creation went up from 17,540 in 2013-14 to 32,967 in 2014-15 with an annual increase of 87.95 percent. Recently, the government merged the Privatization Commission and the Board of Investment into Bangladesh Investment Development Authority, as both had been doing almost the same tasks.
The special economic zones have become an attractive investment destination for many foreign conglomerates due to the government’s subsidiary facilities. But due to lack of long term vision and action plan, the potential economic growth is still unrealized. Besides, absence of rules of law, security, and political instability with bureaucratic entangles have been obstructing potential economic growth. Amidst the situation, the BEZA and BEPZA have achieved tremendous success in dragging investment but the most-hyped one-stop service, uninterrupted supply of power and gas, red-tapism are still bottlenecking growth and development.
Economists asked for investing more on infrastructure development following South Korea and Vietnam — the nations spent 9.5 percent and 12 percent of their GDP annually between 1960 and 1990 respectively and are getting the output of such investment. But unbridled politico-administrative corruption, cost overrun and non-accountability have made the development expenditure less effective. As infrastructure projects involve huge capital investments, infrastructure services the world over are generally produced by the public sector. At the project implementation level, different nature of corruption takes place through mutual understanding between engineers and contractors. Due to tremendous levels of corruption, quality of rural infrastructure is not sustainable. Most of the infrastructure needs maintenance within a year but in some cases maintenance is needed as soon as 6 months after the completion of projects – an unacceptable situation.
All the development works and programs should be people-centric, inclusive and cost efficient and for that the authorities should be merged and monitored to ensure strict accountability.
