Investment stagnancy frustrates Muhith

FE Report | Published: June 22, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00

Finance Minister AMA Muhith listed Saturday the sluggish private investment and manufacturing activities as a major roadblock in the efforts to accelerate the country's economic growth.  
Mr. Muhith felt the need for removing the impediments to faster economic growth with a view to creating more employment opportunities for a large army of new entrants in the job market every year.    
Infrastructure development and effective land management are among the priorities to ensure investment growth and accelerate the pace of manufacturing activity, Muhith observed.
The finance minister made the observations on the state of economy at the first conference of Bangladesh Economists' Forum (BEF), held at a city hotel.
The two-day conference kicked off under the theme 'Vision 2030: A framework for economic policymaking and strategy formulation in pluralistic democracy'.
Top policymakers, Members of Parliament, leading economists, business leaders, bankers, representatives of diplomatic and donor communities and leading development specialists are attending the conference.
Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), Policy Research Institute (PRI) and Bangladesh Bank (BB) supported the meet while the Association of Bankers Bangladesh Limited (ABB), HSBC and Standard Chartered Bank are event partners of the cutting-edge meet on political economy.
Rehman Sobhan, Chairman of the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), chaired the opening ceremony with the finance minister attending it as chief guest. Mohiuddin Alamgir, former director, policy and planning, UN IFAD, delivered the welcome note.
Michael Lipton, research professor of Poverty Research Unit, Sussex University, England, presented a keynote styled 'Farming, fertility, food: why has Bangladesh done better than expected? Can it continue to do so?'
Speaking at the inaugural function, the finance minister said decentralization of government would help effective land-use planning as agricultural land is being occupied by construction sector. "Central government is not capable of making an efficient land-use plan,"   he said, underlining the urgency of devolution of the centralized executive power.
Mr Muhith made a frank admission that private investment had almost stagnated during the last five years. He said the situation calls for attaching priority to the growth of the manufacturing sector.
He felt the need for political stability as an imperative for attracting large-scale private investment. The custodian of the exchequer, however, maintained that the country's economy was performing well amid the prevailing ground situation.
"I think one of the failures of the economy is that we have not been able to promote large-scale manufacturing sector," he said, relating the unemployment problem to this flipside of the economy.  
The finance minister told his audience that the government had switched its focus from energy development to manpower development for building skilled manpower-which is broadly seen as a sine qua non for the country to graduate from dependence on primary products to high-end products and services.
In the keynote presentation, Mr Lipton focused on successes and upcoming challenges for the economy.
He noted fertility rate declined and poverty also got reduced very fast in Bangladesh.
For further advances on the socioeconomic front the British professor stressed the need for reaping 'demographic dividend' and maintaining continued freedom of enquiry and experiment.
Professor Rehman Sobhan pointed out under-utilisation of intellectual capital, which the economist attributed to 'market failure'.
He said the government should be receptive to opinions and ideas irrespective of political identities.