Shiro Sadoshima
Bangladesh should graduate from its position as labour-intensive single product-producing country to a producer of technological-based diversified goods for doubling the Japanese investment through brining in clean technologies.
Japanese Ambassador Shiro Sadoshima gave the suggestion, assuring that his country is ready to help Bangladesh develop its capacity in diversifying the industrial base for getting access to the East Asian market and other regions.
During an exclusive interview with the Financial Express last week, he said Japan considers Bangladesh strategically an important country to meet its vision of expanding global and regional ties together with comprehensive partnership of the country.
"Japan-Bangladesh relationship has stepped into a new level and we want to develop new set of relationships over the achievements made so far," the ambassador commented on the four-decade-old ties and investment likely to be forthcoming following the recent visit of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to Japan.
The Prime Minister visited Japan on May 25-28, first after the January 5 elections, when she signed a joint statement with her counterpart, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, reaffirming their commitment to further strengthening bilateral cooperation by elevating the friendly relationship to a new partnership.
The Japanese envoy said Bangladesh had already earned reputation in the world for various reasons, particularly for its role as an important member in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), having respectful position in the United Nations for contributing to the peacekeeping mission and becoming a second-largest exporting country of readymade garments.
He, however, said the country needs to invest more in changing its image and shifting its industry and production from the labour-intensive to technology-based to speed up and increase implementation and production levels.
"Japan will help and sit together in the coming years if Bangladesh makes its utmost efforts on its part as well. We are serious."
The Japanese ambassador said the newly-conceived Japan-Bangladesh comprehensive partnership has been planned mainly on three main pillars -working together in the international level towards attaining global peace and stability, expanding economic ties in the coastal regions-Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean regions --, and promotion of cultural and people-to-people exchange.
"We can work together with those countries where we have common stands," he said, adding that Bangladesh's geographical location put it in an important position in the Asia-Pacific region and the Indian Ocean region and for regional connectivity.
The envoy further explained that Japan and Bangladesh will now work together for ensuring peace and stability, fighting global warming, for nuclear non-proliferation as well as meeting the Japan Prime Minister Abe office vision to develop coastal region-Asia-Pacific region and Indian Ocean region.
The ambassador, designated extraordinary and plenipotentiary from his foreign office, said being its location next to ASEAN 10 countries Bangladesh can enjoy the fruit of huge supply chain of the region by producing finished, half-finished products and services if Bangladesh strives for regional connectivity by harmonising its tariff structure, for example.
"Japan has done lot to 10 ASEAN countries and our next target is to reinforce the connectivity in the Indian Ocean and Asia-Pacific ocean region," he said.
In this regard, he called upon Bangladesh private sector to focus on East Asia like many other countries did, including Korea, China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand, as none of them failed to grab the market.
Ambassador Shadoshima noted that Bangladesh can be a supplier of many finished, half-finished products, say, for example, automobiles, television, refrigerator and air condition, with the help of Japan. This will help increase its capacity and grab the East and Southeast Asia market if Bangladesh puts effort toward this target.
Bangladesh industrial base is mainly dependent on labour-intensive readymade garment industry the products of which are mostly exported to the European and North American countries. At present, many intermediary goods worth US $ 1.97 trillion are traded within East and Southeast Asia -Japan, Korea, China and ASEAN.
Ambassador Shadoshima said the Bangladesh prime minister has well taken the message of diversifying the industrial base during her last May visit to Japan aiming to fulfill her vision 2021.
Citing his embassy's consideration of Bangladesh investment environment better than Myanmar for developing affiliated services like transportation, communications, financing, including non-banking financing, dispute resolution and so on, he, however, laid importance on further improvement of the environment to attract Japanese investors.
The Ambassador pointed out that the Joint Statement focuses on further improvement of the investment environment to invite potential investment, mainly from small and medium enterprises (SMEs), on a larger scale from his country.
He said there are many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) of second and third tiers in Japan and big manufacturers depend on them for accumulating very good know-how technique and production.
"Let's sit together to discuss the issues, do it more efficiently to overcome critical issues, for example, shortage of energy supply, transportation, infrastructures, cumbersome proceeding to set up companies," he said, assuring Japan's support to finance in this regard.
He thinks Bangladesh could double the number of products and investment inviting the Japanese SMEs.
Accepting that the cheap labour can reduce the investment cost almost by half, he, however, said on the sidelines of labour, technology can help the country increase their production capacity as well as the capacity of the labour on technological know-how which would be necessary for expanding its markets.
To a question about setting up Japanese Industrial Park, the Ambassador said the Japanese potential SMEs will be encouraged to invest in the park where JETRO and BEPZA have signed a memorandum of understanding to reserve rental factory buildings and plots exclusively for them. He further said use of technology will also improve the level of implementation of the Japanese-funded projects, which is necessary to get Japan's soft loan.
In the joint communiqué, Japanese Prime Minister Abe announced his commitment to provide up to $ 6.0 billion in additional assistance from 2014, taking into account proper and smooth implementation of the Japan-funded projects.
The ambassador said the US 6.0 billion in the next four/five years will be ensured with the increase of efficiency, including the use of technology, as it will improve the average level of implementation of official development assistance loan projects.
Bangladesh average 13 per cent implementation rate will easily be improved over world average of 15 per cent through shifting the implementation process with technology from labour-orientated state, he added.
During the interview, the FE also talked more about Japan's view on Bangladesh's plan to set up nuclear power plant, energy efficiency etc. The ambassador said his country wants to share its expertise on peaceful uses of nuclear energy and nuclear non-proliferation accumulated long time and Fukushima nuclear disaster experience throughout the world, including Bangladesh, so that this kind of unwanted situation is not repeated.
He observed that Bangladesh's energy need is huge and his country will help set up Matabari Ultra Super Critical coal-based power plant for boosting 1200- megawatt more supply as it is more efficient than other options due to advancement of environment-friendly technology.
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