Translating nation's growth potential into reality

Bangladesh's potential as a regional growth centre has long been recognised by its international development partners. With a quarter of the population aged between 15 and 29 years, the country is now poised to exploit its immense demographic dividend. Acknowledging this fact, international agencies including PricewaterhouseCoopers Bangladesh, in short, PwC Bangladesh, a local chapter of the UK-based professional service organisation, that keep track of the trend have come up with their assessments in this regard. For instance, in its recently published report titled, 'Destination Bangladesh', PwC Bangladesh dwelt at length on the existing opportunities that are available as well as the future possibilities that the country holds out as a foreign investment destination of choice. In this connection, a comparative study on the subject points to some attractive features that the local labour market offers the prospective foreign investors. For an example, in the apparel sector, the workers' wage in Bangladesh is 74 per cent cheaper than the minimum wage in China and 35 per cent lower than that in India. The condition evidently provides a considerable cost advantage vis-à-vis its regional peers. By granting tax payment exemptions for up to three years, relaxing work permit for project-related foreign nationals and employees, giving the advantage of repatriating invested capital, profits, dividends and so on as the government has done should work as inducements for the intending foreign investors in the economy.
Then its huge youth force, if oriented properly, can turn Bangladesh into a veritable outsourcing powerhouse, the PwC report further observed. In recognition of the fact that IT and the IT-enabled services are the present-day as well as the future goldmine for outsourcing work, the government already offers 100 per cent tax exemption to this sector until 2024 and the provision could be further extended up to 2030. So far as the capabilities of its working age population's potentialities in this sector are concerned, the country's move two notches up to the 35th position in the A T Kearney's Global Service Index 2021 ranking speaks volumes for that. The government's target of creating over 2,000,000 direct and 50,000 indirect jobs and thereby making it possible to earn to the tune of US$5.0 billion annually through outsourcing is achievable if only, the idea is amply backed up by appropriate policies and fiscal support. To that end, a large number of training centres and hi-tech parks have to be established for developing a professional roadmap with an eye on producing high-tech IT professionals.
The population's proven abilities to sustain and forge ahead against all odds are best highlighted by the way Bangladesh emerged stronger from the recent devastating pandemic. The country stood out posting a growth of 6.9 per cent in the thick of the pandemic-wrought fiscal year 2020-21 and beyond in the next fiscal (2021-22) when the rest of the world had been struggling to restore its pre-pandemic state of growth.
But there is more to do. Given that the export is still mainly a single-product (apparel, to be specific) sector, the government needs to widen its corridor of incentives to encourage diverge segments of the industry to expedite export diversification. At the same time, to meet the upcoming challenges, especially to mitigate the loss of the preferential trade benefits in the post-graduation dispensation, the government would do well to expedite its ongoing efforts at negotiating Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with its major trading partners. While the nation's growth potential is a dormant asset, the real task will be to translate that possibility into reality. Let the government be up to the task.