Bangladesh is a good place to invest in. Some Indian companies have already expressed their desire to invest here, said Indian High Commissioner (HC) to Bangladesh, Vikram Doraiswami.
He said India currently has investments of $3.5 billion in Bangladesh. The establishment of the government’s Special Economic Zones (SEZ) will create opportunities for more investment.
He said this at a seminar organised by the Indian High Commission in Gulshan on Sunday. The seminar was attended by business and economic journalists of Bangladesh.
The Indian HC also spoke about the current state of bilateral trade between the two countries, the ongoing challenges in increasing trade, and ways to resolve them.
Responding to a question from reporters at the time, Doraiswami said the fundamental barrier is the cost of exports. If the export cost is low, it is possible to sell the product to the consumer at a relatively low price even after paying the tariff.
Indian High Commission Second Secretary Pramyesh Basall, Railway Advisor Anita Barik, and Priyanshu Tiwari, resident representative for EXIM Bank of India, presented three separate papers at the seminar.
They presented various data on bilateral trade, investment, loan assistance, remittance, and power issues. They said the major barriers to trade growth between the two countries are port restrictions, lack of quality infrastructure, and high tariffs. At present, 60% to 400% duties have to be paid when importing Indian goods to Bangladesh, where duty free and quota free facilities are available for export of Bangladeshi products to the Indian market.
They observed that apart from readymade garments, there is other export potential for Bangladesh in several sectors, including leather, food, IT and ITES (Information Technology and Information Technology Enabled Services).
They also said the trade deficit between the two countries has been decreasing over the last few years.
Explaining why more power is not being imported from India to Bangladesh, they said it is not possible to increase power imports on the existing transmission infrastructure. In order to increase power imports, transmission infrastructural capacity has to be increased.
