Dr Zaid Bakht The Padma Multipurpose Bridge (PMB) connecting the cut-off southwestern part of Bangladesh holds enormous potential for facilitating the setting up of clothing and agro-processing industries, says a noted economist who enumerates umpteen other benefits, too.
"To my mind, two sectors mainly may flourish in southwestern districts and they are RMG and the agro-processing industries," says Dr Zaid Bakht, who is chairman of the Board of Directors of the state-owned Agrani Bank Limited.
This belt remained ignored and one of the poor areas of the country. It has huge unemployed youths there.
He says the entrepreneurs now will get comparatively cheap labour there as the cost of living in 21 districts remained much lower than in Dhaka and Chattogram.
Dr Bakht made these observations while talking to the FE exclusively at the Agrani Bank headquarters in Dhaka, ahead of much-orchestrated opening of the bridge.
The country's longest 6.14-kilometre bridge connects Louhajong, Munshiganj, to Shariatpur and Madaripur across the mighty river, linking the country's southwest to northern and eastern regions.
Dr Bakht, who also served as a research director at Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), feels that multinationals or companies with international repute may tie up with local entrepreneurs to set up agro-based industries in the region to produce exportable agro-products.
"Actually, we need now technology to produce unique and international-standard goods and this is simply possible through joint ventures with multinational agro- companies," Dr Bakht notes.
He says the global agro-brands like Delmond and similar others may explore the opportunities by partnering local enterprises.
"There are huge dormant entrepreneurs in the region and this bridge may help build both small and large industries by them there."
And all factors of production - land, labour, capital, and entrepreneurs --- are now there in the south. But the connectivity with the mainstream remained poor and the bridge now will ensure better market linkages.
He expresses the hope that the bridge will usher in a new era for the region as all sorts of produce will get fair price.
But the renowned economist says that there is now a need for complementary investment to explore and reap the optimum benefit of the largest bridge.
"Intra-regional connectivity is now very much important, and for this, there is a need for complementary investment''.
He suggests connectivity of Upazila to Upazila as such intensive connectivity by roads and rails may boost the economy of the region much faster.
Dr Bakht mentions that some people have been opposing the linking of rail with the bridge arguing that it will not be viable economically. He argues the opposite. "To my mind, this (rail linkage) is a complementary investment as the future will depend on rail. Rail carries much and freight is cheaper than by road."
"The rail inclusion in the bridge will give much future benefit to the people and the economy," he emphatically says about the double-decker bridge provision.
He also sees prospect of other economic and financial activities getting boosted there as both government and non-governmental organisations may ramp up their activities.
When the organisations will see the development activities there, then the NGOs and the financial institutions will explore opportunities there to invest.
Turning to the prevailing higher inflation in the economy, the economist says inflationary pressures have been mounting on the economy and hitting hard poor and the limited-income group of people. He, in this context, mentions that the prices of food items on the international market have shot up significantly due to the war in Ukraine and supply-chain disruptions at a time when the global economy started to find a rebound.
"This is mainly imported inflation," he observes, adding that such type of inflation cannot be controlled by ''import-dependent economies like ours''.
Dr Bakht feels that for the low-income people, the cost of living is in a very stressful situation now. ''The government should help them as much as possible."
He suggests that money-supply reduction in the economy may be a tool to combat the higher inflationary pressure on the economy--the way the West is trying to tame wayward consumer market with inflation hovering around double-digit levels in countries over there.
"But there is a risk as such tempering in the smooth money- supply growth may affect the overall economy, particularly the private sector," he cautions.
He, however, suggested for the government some measures in the wake of such higher inflationary pressure on the economy. For example, the government might provide adequate food supply through open-market sales (OMS) and other relief activities both in the rural and urban areas.
''The government may take initiative to widen the OMS and other such activities to support the poor and the limited-income group of people as they have been maintaining painful life''.
On almost a stagnant situation in the allocation of the social safety-net programmes in the budget for FY2023, Dr Bakht says the government should increase allocations on the area but proper targeting must be ensured.
Dr Bakht says the government may reduce or maintain zero-rated tariffs on food imports.
"I also suggest lowering the government expenditure on the unnecessary projects as part of fighting the inflation," he added.
The former BIDS director of research, however, is not favouring contractionary monetary policy, which will be unveiled in July.
"I favour accommodative monetary policy as the contractionary money policy will kill the ongoing recovery."
He feels that the GDP-growth target and attaining the inflation target should be the main goals of the upcoming monetary policy, keeping the private- sector growth unhurt.
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