Overhauling regulations to attract FDIs
Wednesday, 19 March 2008
BANGLADESH provides exceptionally liberal or favourable terms and conditions to the investors, specially foreign ones. But these incentives are mainly on paper. The ground reality reflects handicaps in the form of various regulations. They act as disincentives to the investors. It is the considered opinion of potential foreign investors that this country should carry out fast reforms to minimise regulations or shorten the time-span involved in observing them. If this is done, then the otherwise positive features in the investment policies of the country would make an attractive investment destination.
Reportedly, a multilateral capital donors, is undertaking a programme to facilitate the process of such reforms in Bangladesh. The government should lose no time in taking appropriate follow-up actions on the offer from the concerned donor agency. It should also accelerate the pace of reforms within a short time-frame. The same is all the more necessary in view of the fact that foreign direct investment (FDI) appears to be declining in Bangladesh. FDIs have dwindled down by more than 50 per cent in the span of a year.
This is a most undesirable trend for a country that suffers from insufficient investment from its public and private sectors. There is a pressing need to speed up the reforms, proposed by the concerned multilateral donor, at the soonest to attract investment.
An investor feels frustrated because it takes more than a year, about 425 days, for him (the foreign investor) to register property in Bangladesh. Similar other factors, that cause delays in other spheres of the regulatory regime, are not at all conducive to motivating the foreign investors. Rationalisation of this regulatory framework is imperative to make it responsive to the demand for saving time and hassles - two considerations uppermost in the minds of most of the investors, local or foreign.
Salahuddin Ahmed
Gulshan
Dhaka
Reportedly, a multilateral capital donors, is undertaking a programme to facilitate the process of such reforms in Bangladesh. The government should lose no time in taking appropriate follow-up actions on the offer from the concerned donor agency. It should also accelerate the pace of reforms within a short time-frame. The same is all the more necessary in view of the fact that foreign direct investment (FDI) appears to be declining in Bangladesh. FDIs have dwindled down by more than 50 per cent in the span of a year.
This is a most undesirable trend for a country that suffers from insufficient investment from its public and private sectors. There is a pressing need to speed up the reforms, proposed by the concerned multilateral donor, at the soonest to attract investment.
An investor feels frustrated because it takes more than a year, about 425 days, for him (the foreign investor) to register property in Bangladesh. Similar other factors, that cause delays in other spheres of the regulatory regime, are not at all conducive to motivating the foreign investors. Rationalisation of this regulatory framework is imperative to make it responsive to the demand for saving time and hassles - two considerations uppermost in the minds of most of the investors, local or foreign.
Salahuddin Ahmed
Gulshan
Dhaka