Bangladesh invites Pakistani investment in export industries

KARACHI: Bangladesh aims to meet a challenging $50 billion export target by 2021 and wants Pakistan to expand its investment partnership with it for making the most of the opportunities available in the world’s s second largest garments' exporter.

“I invite Pakistani businessmen to import more from Bangladesh,” said Tarik Ahsan, High Commissioner of Bangladesh, in a seminar titled “‘Taking Bangladesh where export and investment grow better” organised by his office at a local hotel. Ahsan said Pakistani companies had significant investment in apparel sector in Bangladesh, while his country had established 100 economic zones for facailitating foreign investment.

Last year, Pakistan’s exports to Bangladesh amounted $744 million, surpassing Bangladesh imports of around $600 million, The Bangladeshi diplomat said there were irregular contacts between the businessmen of the two countries, while they also faced visa issues.

While calling upon the Pakistani businessmen to urge their government to improve relations with Bangladesh’s, he urged the both countries to increase joint economic cooperation.

Noor-E-Helal, Bangladesh’s Deputy High Commissioner in Karachi, gave a detailed presentation on the economic journey of his country. Helal said Bangladesh was now among top 10 fastest growing economies, emerging as role model to many countries of the world.

“With GDP (gross domestic product) of above $275 billion, Bangladesh has become second largest apparel exporter after China.” Besides apparel, sectors like ceramics, medicines, information communication technology, shipbuilding etc were also on the path of rapid growth, he said.

“By 2041, Bangladesh will enter in the list of developed countries,” Helal said. Talking about investment opportunities, he cited the example of Soorty Textile (BD) Limited, which was the single largest apparel company with investment from a Pakistani group and was 100 percent export-oriented with more than 6,000 employees.

Helal said his country offered best utility prices compared to Karachi, Mumbai and other Asian cities. Bangladesh had developed nine export processing zones, which contributed around $7.2 billion in its total exports, said the deputy high commissioner.

“They have Public Private Partnership (PPP) economic zones, private economic zones, government economic zones, government to government (G2G) economic zones as well.” Helal said Bangladesh’s IT sector was 300,000 professional strong.