The impact of scarcity of land is being felt in different areas of investment, both local and foreign, in new industrial and commercial ventures. The domestic investors can manage land for their ventures but the cost of the same tends to make their projects economically not viable. The foreign investors, however, is entirely dependent on government cooperation to select suitable land for their ventures. But the government has not so far been able to make available land suitable for building industrial or other ventures by foreign investors. In recent years, the power supply situation has improved to a considerable extent. But land scarcity continues to dampen the investors' enthusiasm. For any industrial or commercial venture, location is an important factor. None would build an enterprise in an area that lacks utility services, better connectivity and marketing potential.
The land-man ratio in Bangladesh is already one of the lowest in the world and the situation is likely to deteriorate further. A substantial area of land, primarily in the category of farmland, is being eaten up every year by new homes, roads, educational institutions, industries, etc. If the current trend persists, it is feared, the country would be fully dependent on imported foods by the year 2050.
Since land is scarce, the government should have devised the best possible land management policy and ensured its enforcement. Unfortunately, no government has done this or made any worthwhile effort to help address this important task. Rather, it has wasted valuable lands on many unimportant development projects or encouraged others to do the same. Land has become too important a resource and its price has also skyrocketed. Obviously, there would be lots of crimes, both physical and financial, centring land. With the passage of time, the intensity of such crimes, including that of land-grabbing, would only increase.
Against this backdrop, the government can offer investors, particularly the foreign ones, the unutilised land belonging to a number of state-owned enterprises (SoEs) for building manufacturing units. This, as many experts consider, would be a better option for effective land management, considering the imperative to help promote new industrial investments which will create jobs and income-generating opportunities. There have been repeated appeals from the chambers and other trade bodies to take appropriate initiatives to this effect. The concerned functionaries of the government also made positive response. But for some reasons which the government knows better, things have got stuck up. The top government leaders do very often invite foreign investors to make investment here and promise them land for building special economic zones of their own. But fulfilling such a promise might prove quite challenging. The experience of the Korean Export Processing Zone (KPEZ) in Chittagong is a sordid pointer to this fact.
