The success of businesses can drive the growth of a country and help achieve an overall sustainable development and create employment opportunities, said the International Chamber of Commerce-Bangladesh.
‘Businesses are the driving force for any economy, be it capitalistic or socialistic,’ said the editorial of the current News Bulletin (July-Sept’ 2021) of the ICCB released on Sunday.
Entrepreneurs are frequently thought of as national assets to be cultivated, motivated and remunerated to the greatest possible extent.
‘They’ve the ability to change the way we live and work at local, national and international levels,’ said the ICCB editorial.
Over the past five decades, Bangladesh has transformed itself from being a ‘basket case’ to one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Before the onset of the Covid-19, the economy was growing rapidly, recording an annual expansion in the range of 7-8 per cent for sometimes, the ICCB observed.
The ICCB also remembered with gratitude legendry businesspeople, including those who have passed away, for their visionary leadership and farsightedness in creating the corporate culture and making the Bangladesh economy one of the fastest growing in the world.
After the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, then East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, was not an ideal place for Bangladeshi entrepreneurs to do business or establish industries as the West Pakistanis (now Pakistan) were in complete control of the country and the economy.
‘Bangladeshis were mainly in the mid- and lower-level service. However, some of our leading businessmen have made it possible to show the world that Bangladeshis are capable of becoming successful entrepreneurs,’ the editorial read.
The late Abul Kasem Khan from Chattogram, a district judge in 1934, was probably the first Bangladeshi to enter business leaving a job, the ICCB said.
It said that he established various types of industries and formed the AK Khan Group in 1945 and there were only a few business entities owned by local entrepreneurs during the British era.
Of them, the oldest was the family trading business of the late Anwar Hossain (since 1834) and founding chairman of Transcom Group the late Latifur Rahman’s family (with a tea estate since 1885), the editorial read.
Since 1947 till the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, only a few small industries, tea gardens and two commercial banks and a small number of jute and textile mills were owned by Bangladeshis.
After the country’s independence, all industries, banks and big commercial entities were nationalised, according to the ICCB.
However, the change in government policies in the mid-70s for adoption of privatisation, export liberalisation and import-substitution created the opportunity for businesspersons to begin their entrepreneurial journey.
ICCB president and chairman and CEO of ETBL Holdings Mahbubur Rahman along with Transcom Group chairman Latifur Rahman, Square Group chairman Samson H Chowhdury, Anwar Group chairman Anwar Hossain, Apex Group chairman Syed Manzur Elahi and a few other business leaders contributed towards the change in policy decision of the government for privatisation.
In less than 40 years, the garment industry of the country has emerged as one of the nation’s success stories in recent decades, the ICCB said.
It is the second-largest RMG exporter globally earning over $35 billion a year from export. A number of pharmaceutical companies have also started exporting medicines to 119 developed and developing countries.
The country also exports leather products, handicrafts, agro-products, ocean-going vessels and software, among others. The total yearly export earning was $38.76b in FY21.
The private sector is responsible for 90 percent of jobs in the developing world.
In Bangladesh, the ‘private sector which already accounts for more than 70 percent of all investment, supported by a strong financial sector, will need to play an important role in spurring the recovery so the country can grow, export and create quality jobs,’ according to Alfonso Garcia Mora, IFC’s vice president for Asia and Pacific.
The businesses played the leading role in achieving the success, says the editorial.
