A meeting was held today on ‘sectoral competitiveness of investment and export diversification’ at the boardroom of Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA) with its Executive Chairman Kazi M. Aminul Islam in the chair.

BIDA Executive Member Navas Chandra Mandal, Md. Altaf Hossain, Secretary Ajit Kumar Paul FCA, Director Tauhidur Rahman Khan and World Bank Group (WBG) Private Sector Specialist Md. Lutfullah and Consultant M. Shaker Bin Shams were present among others on the occasion. A research paper titled ‘Enhancing Sector Competitiveness and Export Diversification for Bangladesh’ was presented by Ms. Hosna Ferdous Sumi, Private Sector Specialist of WBG.

The sectors which are identified as potential and feasible sectors for investment in Bangladesh from the research paper are: ceramics, food processing, furniture, jute yarn, leather & footwear, light engineering, pharmaceuticals, plastics and IT. Among them, four sectors which have been marked as the priority sectors for investment by multi-objective ranking analysis are: footwear, leather & leather products, plastics and light engineering.

BIDA Executive Chairman Kazi M. Aminul Islam said, unless our economy is diversified, our export products will also not be diversified. Our economy has mainly stood on RMG sector for more than two decades. This is the high time to diversify our products; otherwise it would be difficult to cope with the present competitive world. He also said, we have to identify our hidden potential sectors. In this case, he expressed his views on pharmaceuticals and light engineering as attractive sectors for investment in Bangladesh. He stressed on the identification of the barriers of the existing policies and its reform programs in order to enhance sectoral competitiveness of investment and export diversification.

Later, in a meeting with representatives of Japan’s world-renowned Marubeni Company, he answered several questions about their investment in Bangladesh. Noted, Marubeni has expressed their deep interest in establishing a paper mill in Bangladesh and their feasibility study regarding this is going on.