Executive Chairman of Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA) Lokman Hossain Miah has urged the stakeholders concerned to work together for ensuring a conducive environment for local investments to attract more foreign investments in Bangladesh.
Lokman made the call when Nihad Kabir, Chairperson of Business Initiative Leading Development (BUILD), met him at the BIDA office in the capital yesterday.
The Executive Chairman of BIDA informed that BIDA is very much into regulatory simplification and has been developing some Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) so that all government bodies share the same SOP with the businesses.
Referring to One Stop Service (OSS) in BIDA, Lokman added that out of 150 services, it now provides 67 services, and about 23 organisations are involved in these processes, said a press release today.
Appreciating the activities of BUILD, Lokman said that foreign investors first meet with the local investors. "So we need to provide proper facilities and business-friendly regulations to support the businesses and make the local investors happy while our endeavours need to be ramped up,"
Highlighting different collaborative activities between BIDA and BUILD, BUILD Chairperson Nihad Kabir highlighted BUILD's secretarial services to the Private Sector Development Policy Coordination Committee (PSDPCC) chaired by the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister.
She said efforts are on to establish a structured mechanism to advocate for private sector issues to work for simplification of regulatory reforms and thus unlocking investment constraints, said a press release today.
Nihad further briefed on the activities of BUILD for private sector development and cited examples of regulatory bottlenecks being faced by the local and foreign investors in the country.
She requested BIDA to speed up trade and investment services so that time and cost of the investors could be saved.
BUILD Chairperson, while thanking BIDA Executive Chairman and referring to research initiated by BIDA for six potential countries, suggested more collaboration for conducting need-based surveys and studies for attracting potential investment sectors, countries to contribute to achieving investment targets of 8th Five Year Plan and Perspective Plan 2041.
BUILD CEO Ferdaus Ara Begum referred to some of the activities of BUILD in addressing ease of doing business and policy reforms in respect to repatriation, which is pursued by BUILD in collaboration with BIDA.
She also referred to a business confidence survey conducted by BUILD to gather perceptions of enterprises about general business conditions and their willingness to expand new business and thus sought cooperation from BIDA.
The release said BIDA and BUILD agreed to revisit the existing MOU (previously signed with the Board of Investment) following the new scopes of collaboration.
She also referred to the signature publication of BUILD titled 'Business Start-Up Licensing: A Regulatory Guide' published by BUILD and BIDA for supporting entrepreneurs and sought continued support from BIDA.
Shah Mohammad Mahboob, director general, BIDA; Md Shakil Mahamud, director (Deputy Secretary), BIDA; Fahmida Jabeen Shoma, consultant of BUILD; Moshaddek Alam, additional director for Communications and Advocacy; and Kanis Fatama, Sr. Research Associate were present, among others, in the meeting.