BOI-PC merger underway

Faruque Ahmed | Published: July 08, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00

The process of merger of the Privatisation Commission (PC) and the Board of Investment (BOI) is now under way to create a new organisation the name of which is yet to be decided.
The objective behind the move is to add fresh momentum to the country's slowed-down industrialisation process.
The new organisation will receive investment proposals like the BOI now does from home and abroad and allocate land to genuine investors to set up plants. The land will be made available from the property belonging to the state-owned enterprises (SoEs) awaiting divestment.
"The focus of the merger is to set up a new body capable of responding to new challenges of growing investment requests, land shortage and relevant other formalities to allow investors to set up industries in a rapidly changing business environment," Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan, former secretary and member (Operations) of PC told the FE on Monday.
Mosharraf said the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) in an order issued in April this year had approved the merger. The PC had earlier sent a summery to the PMO seeking guidance on the stalled privatization programme.
He said on receipt of the order from the PMO, a five-member committee headed by an additional secretary at the cabinet division has been set up. It is now doing the necessary ground work on the merger of the two entities, including the preparation a new organogram for the new set up.
A senior PC official said the committee is scheduled to submit its report by the end of July; but it may need some more time in view of the enormous work associated with the job.
He said the present government is showing less interest to privatization of SoEs from its political view point. There are around 22 mills and factories now on the list of divestment but the priority at the moment goes to using their excess land for further industrialisation.
He said, meanwhile, the Commission has carried out three surveys on the status and performance of large number of already divested SoEs and results showed less than 40 per cent sales proved ineffective; some of the divested SoEs have been suffering from many set backs. To pursue privatisation is not an option at this moment, he said.
So the government has decided to make available excess land of the SoEs to genuine local and foreign investors who are failing to set up plants in want of land. Japanese investors want land, SoEs' land may provide a partial solution to their problem, he said.
SoEs have a large area of land and a single investor may only need part of the land in small plots. The new organisation will take up plan how to meet individual investor's demand once they will make registration for investment.
The land of the SoEs has in-built infrastructure like roads, gas and electricity and investors may utilize these facilities quickly.
The official said the PC had also sent a proposal to the PMO in early 2013 suggesting allocation of excess SoEs' land, now around 1600 acres, to new industries. Most of these SoEs are either sick or loss-making ones and their excess land may be used to meet demand of genuine investors, he said.
He said many investors are destroying arable land while excess land of SoEs is lying unutilised. The official said the PMO had immediately set up a committee headed by adviser to Prime Minister Dr Moshiur Rahman to study the proposal of using SoEs' land for allocation to private investors.
Dr SA Samad later headed the committee and finalised the recommendations which were submitted in July 2013.
The recommendations had also suggested the merger of BOI and PC to create a new set up to look into the problems faced by new investors. Once the new organisation will start working, its one wing may handle investment proposals while another will line up land and take steps to allocate it to genuine investors.