Focus should be on attracting impact investment in next five years: Experts

Business should be done by ensuring social impact in addition to profit, and the focus for the next five years should be on attracting impact investment as well as building capacity of the investment managers, experts have said.

"Bangladesh should focus on raising awareness on impact investment in the next five years," said Lokman Hossain Miah, chair of the National Advisory Board (NAB) for Impact Investment Bangladesh and executive chairman of the Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (Bida).

He was among the panelists at a discussion at the "International Impact Investment Summit-Impact InveSTAR" organised by the National Advisory Board (NAB) for Impact Investment in Bangladesh at the Bida office in the capital's Agargaon on Saturday.

Impact investing is defined as the deployment of funds into investments that generate a measurable and beneficial social or environmental impact alongside a financial return on investment.

During the panel discussion, Chair of NAB Trust Arastoo Khan said, "We are just looking for profit maximisation. We used to do a risk and return [investment] before. Now, it will be impact with risk and return."

Lokman further said that the focus for the next five years should be on enhancing awareness of impact investment, attracting impact investment, building the capacity of impact investment managers, conducting research to compare emerging economies and encouraging global impact investors to support the ready projects.

The National Advisory Board (NAB) Bangladesh is hosting the event to mark the national impact investment day on 10 November. The board acts as the advisory committee to guide the development of impact investment in Bangladesh.

As per Lokman Hossain Miah, former finance minister late Abul Maal Abdul Muhith launched the concept of impact investment in Bangladesh and the journey started on 10 November, 2016.

"To mark the day, we declare 10 November as the National Impact Investment Day for Bangladesh - and we are the first country to do so," added the Bida executive chairman.

Architect Farhadur Reza, CEO of NAB Bangladesh and founder president of Build Bangladesh, said that the board aims to complement the mainstream investment ecosystem with impact investment, and ensure the sustainability of the impact investment momentum across Bangladesh by influencing and actively involving the local and global champions.

Impact transparency and scaleup, impact investment instruments, regulation framework and ways to facilitate impact investment were also discussed by the panelists.