Media report said Bangladesh needs prioritised focus on production and export of light engineering and plastic goods for faster export growth. It therefore needs rapid products diversification and quality upgradation roadmap to capture new markets. Bangladesh economy will be the 25th or 26th largest economy in the world in 2030 when greater FDI flow may come into the country along with ease of doing business. In our view experts have made the right point for the roadmap at a seminar in the city on Tuesday seeking focused attention on development of plastic and light engineering industry with rapid products diversification to capture growing global demand.
We know that light engineering provides the backbone of the national economy with lower dose of investments to ensure huge employment to large work force. We support the idea for quick shifting of product concentrating on big capital and high tech products to emerging small industrial sectors like plastics and light engineering. It can gradually move upwards the country in the industrialization pathway and spread economic activities down to rural and semi-urban level to create more jobs and income generating activities. Light industries are key to spread labour intensive productivity across the country and help developing every corner of the country.
We know that Bangladesh will upgrade from LDC to developing country status in 2026 when it will be able to attract greater foreign direct investment (FDI) but we can’t lose sight to the fact that after that time government subsidy to businesses will exist no more. It can only provide policy support to industries struggling to grow in the forms of research, knowledge sharing and logistics to improve export competitiveness. It is understandable that the government is already considering alternative to cash subsidies during the transition period.
BUILD expert highlighted that plastic toy has got huge potential to be a significant export product along with automobile components, provided that the sector is supported with policies such as bonded warehouse and reduced lead time. There is a huge global market for light engineering and small industrial products and with proper policy support we can be able to capture a big share of the global markers. We share Vietnam’s success story which was able to increase its light engineering and bicycle export because they secured significant foreign direct investment. So Bangladesh must revisit our targets as well considering the FDI issues and global market situation.
