Make investment environment in country more attractive: PM

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has called upon the concerned authorities to work with utmost sincerity to attract adequate investment as the country's economy moves forward.

"We need to work to keep the country's economy moving forward and make our investment environment more attractive," he said.

The Prime Minister said this in her introductory speech at the meeting of the Governing Body of the Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA) here on Thursday morning. The Prime Minister attended the meeting via video conference from Ganobhaban.

Sheikh Hasina said, "Even though there is an investment climate in the country today, all countries are facing problems due to the corona virus." But we have to work on how to move our country's economy forward through this problem. We need to make the investment environment attractive. "

"We have implemented the UN-mandated MDGs very efficiently," he said. Now we are trying to implement SDG (Sustainable Development Goal). For that reason, we are already focusing on a few things. Infrastructure development is one of them. Investment can never come to the country without infrastructure development

Mentioning, the Prime Minister said her government has taken appropriate steps to improve communication from roads to waterways, railways and air.

Referring to power as another important sector in the development of the country, he once referred to mismanagement and limited production in the power sector, saying, "We had a problem with electricity, but today we have a surplus of electricity." The government has decided to import LNG along with its own gas extraction system to solve the gas problem.

With a view to creating a conducive environment to investment, 100 economic zones are being set up across the country, she said.

The economic zones can easily attract larger local and foreign investments alongside creation of huge number of jobs, the premier said.

Hasina said people have started getting benefits from the measures taken by the government for attracting investment.

Alongside giving tax rebate to expedite industrialisation, the government has taken various measures, including exemption of interest for the import of capital machinery, she said.

Stating that there would be no problem over land in the case of investment due to setting up of 100 economic zones, she mentioned that tax rebate, exemption of interest and the new economic zones would make the country's investment environment more attractive.

She said Bangladesh achieved 8.1 percent GDP growth and was on the way to attain 8.2 percent growth, but unfortunately the Covid-19 has stalled this progress. Hasina said the country could have advanced further had the novel coronavirus not hit. "Although the coronavirus dealt a blow to the country, it has created a scope for us as well.

We have to keep this in mind…we have to bring in more investment… we have [huge] population and our land remains ready [for investors]. There are other facilities."

Mentioning that the BIDA had a plan to organise Bangabandhu International Investment Summit in Bangladesh during the Mujib Borsho, she said it was not possible to arrange such a summit as planned in the current situation, but it could be done on a digital platform.