Ensure investment-friendly atmosphere in 2015: business leaders

Businesses have urged politicians to shun violence to ensure an investment-friendly atmosphere in Bangladesh in the coming year. The country witnessed less violence in the outgoing (2014) year than it had in 2013 when the BNP and its allies hit the streets with strings of aggressive campaigns. BNP and its allies Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir had enforced series of nationwide hartal and blockade in the run up to the January 5 elections. Leaders of different chamber and business bodies came up with the call for peace on Wednesday as the BNP-led 20 party alliance plans to start fresh agitations next year to press for a snap election. ‘All we want is a business-friendly environment,’ Hossain Khaled, chief of the Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industries (DCCI), has said. Other business leaders feared that more political violence would discourage foreign investors. A business leader also claimed that Dhaka’s traffic snarls cost businesses Tk 270 billion a year. ‘It’s wasting thousands of work hours and hurting the economy. Commercial hours lost due to traffic jams cost around 3.2 million business hours daily while the snarls also waste fuel worth Tk 118.95 billion a year,’ he pointed out, according to a news agency.