Entrepreneurs urged to invest in light engineering

Local and foreign entrepreneurs should invest more in light engineering sector to cash in the benefits that the government has offered, speakers at a business session said Wednesday.
They also called upon the government to take immediate and effective measures to overcome obstacles like shortages of land and power and ensure easy access to bank finance and transfer of the latest technology to attract foreign investors.
The business session was held on the sidelines of International Investors Forum 2014 Bangladesh which was organised by the Board of Investment (BoI) at a city hotel in the afternoon.
Chairman of Nitol-Niloy Group, Abdul Matlub Ahmed, moderated the business session titled 'Investing in Light Engineering' where commerce minister Tofail Ahmed was present as chief guest.
While presenting a keynote paper on the Prospect, Potential and Opportunities: Emerging Light Engineering Sector in Bangladesh, BUET Professor Dr. M. Kamal Uddin said the importance of light engineering was first felt in the eighties because of emergence of spareparts for automobile industry.
"Now, there are at least 5,000 workshops alone in the LES (light engineering sector) hub in Jinjira and Dolaikhal in the capital and the sector has made a silent revolution here as more than 0.6 million people are directly employed in the LES which is called mother of all industries," he said.
Mentioning various opportunities, he said the government included the LES in the list of thrust sector in the Industrial Policy-2010 considering the potential of the sector and also provided 10 per cent cash incentive for the industry players.
Talking about the market size, he said the global market of the LES is worth US$ 6.6 trillion while the local market size is around US$ 7.0 billion and it accounted for 1.87 per cent to the country's GDP (gross domestic product).
 "So, here is a tremendous opportunity for both local and foreign investors," he said.
Speaking on the occasion, Chief Executive Officer of Business Initiative Leading Development (BUILD), Ferdaus Ara Begum, said more than 40,000 light engineering industries (LEI) are actively in operation here and annually saving US$484 million for Bangladesh by manufacturing import-substitute products.
She said there are some challenges like shortage of raw materials, innovation constraints and lack of quality of the products.
"So, here is the space the government should work with the entrepreneurs to overcome those," she said adding that linkage between domestic and export industries also need to be developed.
President of the Bangladesh Engineering Industry Owners' Association (BEIOA), Abdur Razzaque, said the foreign investors can come and set up incubation centre for the LES with state-of-the-art facility that will help the LEI manufacture new types of products with global standard.
"Despite having immense potential, we could not properly explore the blessings of it. This is our failure. This is a sector with huge space of value addition that we cannot find in other sector," he said.
Bangladesh is enjoying duty and quota-free access to the markets of European Union (EU) and the United States, which will be a lucrative opportunity for foreign investors. President of Dhaka Chamber of Commerce & Industry (DCCI) M Shahjahan Khan said LES is the unexplored and untapped industry in Bangladesh.
 "LES could be a big sector like agriculture if we could properly explore it and more studies are required to be done in this connection," he added.
Speaking as chief guest, commerce minister Tofail Ahmed said his government has been working hard to ensure adequate land and gas for such industrialists.
 "I personally urge the foreigners who have plans to invest in the sector to come to my district (Bhola) and there is no crisis of land and energy in that area," he said.
 "Our intention is clear that we want to make Bangladesh a middle- income nation by our projected deadline of 2021," he added.
FBCCI President Kazi Akram Uddin Ahmed was also present at the event.