Conducive regulatory environment for local investment urged during Bida, BUILD meeting

The Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (Bida) has called on private sector think-tank Business Initiative Leading Development (BUILD) to work together to ensure a conducive environment for local investments, which, in turn, could attract more foreign investments in Bangladesh.

"Foreign investors first meet up 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, and our endeavour needs to ramp up," said Bida Executive Chairman Lokman Hossain Miah at a meeting with BUILD Chairperson Nihad Kabir at the BIDA office yesterday.

Highlighting different collaborative activities between Bida and BUILD, Nihad Kabir provided updates about the BUILD's secretarial services to the Private Sector Development Policy Coordination Committee (PSDPCC), chaired by the Principal Secretary at the Prime Minister's Office, to establish a structured mechanism to advocate for private sector issues and to work for simplification of regulatory reforms to remove investment constraints.

She further briefed on the activities of BUILD for private sector development and raised examples of regulatory bottlenecks faced by the local and foreign investors in the country while Bangladesh is exerting efforts to find investors in several new and non-traditional sectors.

She requested the Bida to speed up trade and investment services so that time and cost of the investors could be reduced, said a press release from the BUILD.

Lokman Hossain Miah said the Bida is very much into regulatory simplification and developing several standard operating procedures (SOP) so that all government bodies share the same SOP with the businesses.

Referring to the One Stop Service (OSS) at the Bida, he said out of 150 services, it now provides 67, and about 23 organisations are involved in these processes.

BUILD CEO Ferdaus Ara Begum referred to some of the activities of the BUILD in addressing ease of doing business and policy reforms in respect of repatriation, which is pursued by the BUILD in collaboration with the BIDA.

 She also referred to a business confidence survey conducted by the think-tank to gather the enterprises' perceptions about general business conditions and their willingness to expand new business and, in that respect, sought cooperation from the investment development authority.

The Bida and the BUILD agreed to revisit the existing MoU (previously signed with the Board of Investment) following the new scopes of collaboration and have it signed for promoting public-private policy dialogue.

She also referred to the BUILD's signature publication titled "Business Start-Up Licensing: A Regulatory Guide", published in collaboration with BIDA, for supporting entrepreneurs and sought continued support from the authorities in this regard.

While thanking the Bida executive chair and referring to a research initiated by the Bida for six potential countries, the BUILD chairperson suggested more collaboration for conducting need-based surveys and studies for attracting investments from potential sectors and countries to contribute to achieving targets of the 8th Five Year Plan and Perspective plan 2041.

Shah Mohammad Mahboob, director general of Bida, Md Shakil Mahamud, its director (deputy secretary), Fahmida Jabeen Shoma, consultant of BUILD, Moshaddek Alam, its additional director for communications and advocacy, and Kanis Fatama, senior research associate, were present at the meeting.