The government has taken a set of proactive measures, including cutbacks on tax and easy residency, to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) into the country, sources said.
The Board of Investment (BoI), in an inter-ministerial meeting recently, made the decisions on liberalising process and extending facilities to the foreign investors.
Under the package measures, the Board of Investment (BoI) in association with the National Board of Revenue (NBR) has reduced corporate taxes for foreign companies from 37.5 per cent to 35 per cent.
Besides, opening offices of all the relevant ministries in the BoI to provide one-stop services to the investors, liberalisation of issuance of work permit, allowing foreign investors to open their offices in Bangladesh, providing security clearance quickly, arrangement of inter-ministerial meeting twice a month on FDI are among the decisions taken by the government.
According to the decisions, from now on a foreign national will be given work permit for one year initially. It will be increased to another four years at a time based on their activity records.
Earlier, they used to be given work permit primarily for one year and four more years in two phases.
The meeting also decided to open liaison offices of all relevant ministries in the BoI to ensure one-stop service to foreign investors in opening their offices in Bangladesh.
Presently, foreign investors need to take clearance from about half a dozen government offices, including home ministry, the department of environment, power and energy authorities prior to opening their offices.
Moreover, inter-connectivity between the BoI and the home ministry would be established to oversee activities of each other and to take more steps to promote FDI accordingly.
It has also been decided that security clearance would be given to the foreign investors within 15 days instead of the existing requirement of 45 days in both commercial and industrial categories.
Executive Chairman of the BoI Syed A Samad said the decisions are the part of his office's efforts to attract greater flow of FDI.
"Prevailing formalities for getting permission for FDI are not investor-friendly. Now we have initiated liberalisation of all the formalities of investment and issuance of work permits to their officials."
This will surely encourage the foreign investors to invest in here, he hopes.
"More FDI means more employment. There are no other options but to attract foreign investment into the country to bring down unemployment through rapid industrialisation and also to boost export earnings," Mr Samad said.
According to him, the BoI had earlier also taken another set of proactive initiatives like road shows, seminar, symposium etc which would undertake publicity on investment facilities in the country in different resource-rich countries around the globe.
The BoI executive chairman said his office is continuing more research on how to attract FDI.
© 2024 - All Rights with The Financial Express
