The Board of Investment (BOI) should be made into a more dynamic, responsive, transparent, and efficient and a good communicator in order to promote investment by both local and foreign investors. The Business Leaders suggested these during a meeting with the new BOI Executive Chairman Kamaluddin Ahmed at ICC Bangladesh (ICCB) Board Room on Wednesday, January 23.

For better understanding of the investment climate in the country it was suggested that Bangladesh Bank and BOI to work together and provide one single statistics on both foreign and local investments.

ICCB President Mahbubur Rahman in his welcome speech drew the attention of the Chairman to the latest World Bank and IFC publication on “Doing Business 2008: Bangladesh” wherein Bangladesh has been ranked 107 out of 178 economies. The investment during In the light of this scenario, he suggested “we shall have to take some concrete measures to ease our various procedural complexities for investment as well as improve our image for creating a business and investor friendly environment. For this, we feel it is of utmost importance to have public-private partnership and continuous dialogue for taking comprehensive steps instead of piecemeal approach to improve business climate”. He also appreciated the initiative of the Chief Adviser of the Caretaker Government in forming Regulatory Reforms Commission and the Bangladesh Better Business Forum (BBBF) and hoped to have some positive outcome from these institutions in order to encourage accelerated investment; both local and foreign.

Rahman pointed that in the name of “service sector” investment, some foreigners are coming to Bangladesh and engaging themselves in business either independently or jointly with local partners, in areas such as, freight forwarding, visa processing companies, shipping agencies, buying houses, beauty parlours, restaurants, shops and many others. These foreigners, in some cases do not even obtain required permission from BOI and necessary visa for doing business. Such kind of activities and clandestine operations does hardly contribute anything in the economy; rather it helps drainage of foreign currency and helps encourage money laundering as well as taking away available opportunities from local entrepreneurs, he observed and suggested that BOI should take appropriate actions in this regard.

In order to have better coordination among various government institutions involved in providing investment promotion and facilitation, it was suggested by the members to bring all such agencies under one roof similar to the Malaysian Investment Development Authority (MIDA) or other such institutions of other countries to provide ONE STOP service to the investors in real sense.

In response, BOI Executive Chairman Kamaluddin Ahmed thanked the ICCB President for inviting him and his colleagues to ICC Bangladesh and giving the opportunity to exchange views with the Business Leaders. He requested the members to send to him concrete suggestions for improvement of the services of not only BOI but also of other agencies so that he could take up the matters with different ministries and agencies for appropriate actions. The Executive Chairman agreed about the problems regarding dynamism at BOI and expressed his sincere eagerness to bring it up to the expectations of stakeholders.

Mr. Ahmed pointed about various limitations of BOI including lack of appropriate manpower and also other facilities. In this regard, he informed that steps have already been initiated to have a most modern complex with the state-of-the-art facilities for BOI at Agargaon, Dhaka to provide required services to the investors. Preparation of a comprehensive BOI Act as well as revision of the present organogram to make BOI more proactive is under active of the government, he said.

BOI Chairman assured of his fullest cooperation and hoped that the business leaders would extend all possible support to BOI and work together to create a better investment scenario.

The Meeting was attended by MCCI President & ICCB Vice President Latifur Rahman, former DCCI & BEF President A. S. M. Quasem, former President, DCCI, AmCham Aftab ul Islam, former BGMEA President Annisul Huq, former FICCI President Masih Ul Karim BKMEA President Md. Fazlul Hoque, former DCCI President R. Maksud Khan, FICCI President Waliur Rahman Bhuiyan, OBE, DCCI President Hossain Khaled, BGMEA President Anwar-Ul-Alam Chowdhury (Parvez), BTMA President Abdul Hai Sarker, Managing Director of A. K. Khan Ltd Salahuddin Kasem Khan, CEO of Warid Muneer Farooqui, CEO of TM Intl Dato’ Yousof Annuar Bin Yaacob, CFO of KAFCO David Bunn DMD of Abdul Monem Ltd. A.S.M. Mainuddin Monem, BOI Executive Members Mushtaq Uddin Ahmad and Abu Reza Khan, GM of Warid Ashraf H. Chowdhury, GM(Finance) of TM Intl Hefzur Rahman, GM Unilever Bangladesh Pervez Ahmed and ICC Bangladesh Secretary Ataur Rahman.