BE Magazine

Monthly business magazine
Leader’s View
A vision to Promote Trade and
Investment with Australia
30
Leader’s View
g Sheikh Fazle Fahim
Bangladesh has one of the most liberal and flexible
investment regimes in South Asia. With ongoing
reforms to improve business climate and more
than US$40bn investment in infrastructure to
update the industrial eco-system for domestic and
foreign direct investment, Bangladesh made it to the
World Bank’s list of the ‘Top 20 improvers in Doing
Business in 2020’.
Australia, a strategic partner and a key foreign direct
investor, has made major contributions in the gas
and petroleum sector of Bangladesh, in addition
to investments in textiles and chemicals. As of
June 2019, total FDI stock of Australia is worth
US$845.75mn.
After our independence in 1971, Australia was
among the first countries to recognise Bangladesh.
Australia established its resident mission in Dhaka
in 1972. Since then, the two countries are engaged
in long proven relations, marked by humanity and
dynamic partnership.
Bangladesh received Duty Free Quota Free (DFQF)
facility to the Australian market since 2003. The
total volume of Bangladesh-Australia trade has
increased significantly, with bilateral trade standing
at US$1.14bn in the last fiscal year, including exports
to Australia worth US$0.8bn and import worth
US$0.6bn.
Since 2008, we are experiencing shining examples
of positive trend for greater engagements and
cooperation in education, economic resilience, trade,
investment and counter terrorism. Our leaderships’
shared values for their constituents sustainable
growth is a reflection of our bilateral relations today.
However the economic synergy is yet to be reflected
in our trade and investments.
Bangladesh is at the cusp of the next growth
trajectory. With fiscal and non fiscal incentives, 100
economic zones, Hi-tech parks, export processing
zones and multimodal-connectivity, Bangladesh
offers endless possibilities that investors could
explore, including:
Joint High tech research, development and
innovation incubators
Knowledge transfer to transition from 3rd IR to 4th
IR including Re-skilling
Cooperation in Trade Logistics, e-commerce,
Fisheries, Agro Processing, Fintech, Halal industry,
ICT, nanotechnology, robotics, IOT, Cyber Security,
AI, Quantum Computing, Quantum Internet among
others.
Joint Ventures on Light, Medium & Heavy industries
Business process re-engineering of MSMEs
Power, Energy, infrastructure and Blue Economy
cooperation
Knowledge transfer for industry academia HR skill
gap, TVET curriculum,
STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts &
Mathematics) based curriculum etc.
Along with diversifying business, we hope to explore
with private sectors of Australia and engage on
each other’s strengths in investment, trade and
knowledge, while adding value to our constituents
and environment.
We look forward to Australia and Bangladesh’s
private sectors engagements to contribute towards
humane sustainable inclusive advancement of our
nations. Our goals are to be targeted, focused, time
bound milestone assessed, complementing our
mutual vision to promote trade, investment and the
role of the private sector.
The writer is the President of FBCCI.
Monthly business magazine
December, 2019