Chief Adviser Professor Dr Muhammad Yunus has called on foreign investors to bring their businesses to Bangladesh and change the world. He made this call in his speech at the inaugural session of the Investment Summit 2025 in Dhaka recently. In this encouraging speech, he further told foreign investors that Bangladesh has all kinds of innovative ideas that can change the world. These ideas need to be transformed into reality.

Describing how people become happy through business, he said that people undoubtedly get pleasure from earning money; but there is additional pleasure in making others happy.

Looking at the real scenario, despite the immense potential for investment, Bangladesh is lagging behind in foreign investment. Investment is not increasing significantly in proportion to GDP. There are still several obstacles in the business environment and investment prospects in this country. These are: limited financing opportunities, corruption, abundance of informal sector, high tax rate, etc. In addition, bureaucratic delays, frequent policy changes, lack of good governance, legal complexity, institutional inefficiency, lack of coordination, etc. also discourage investment.

If these problems can be overcome, the potential for investment in this country will turn bright, since it has demographic advantages. There are more than 175 million people in this country, a large part of whom are young and at working age. A large market and cheap labour force are attractive to investors. Since Bangladesh is located in the center of South Asia, it has easy connectivity with India, China, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. The country's economy is growing rapidly. The government provides tax holidays, export incentives, duty-free import of parts, etc to foreign investors. More than a hundred EPZs and special economic zones (SEZ) are being established in the country.

After the July uprising, economic reforms have been initiated. The interim government has taken several steps to attract investment as well. In his inaugural speech for the investment summit, the chief adviser mainly indicated these immense possibilities when it comes to investment. He rightly said that investing here will not only benefit Bangladesh but also the entire region.

Due to the prolonged drought of investment in the country, new employment opportunities have not been created. Poverty alleviation activities are not gaining momentum. All kinds of harassing activities including extortion, bribery and other forms of corruption have severely hampered investment. The previous government could not create a business-friendly environment in the country by taking effective measures to ensure uninterrupted power and gas supply; undertaking proper development works for railways, roads and waterways; and preventing any kind of malpractices in seaports. As a result, domestic and foreign entrepreneurs have not come forward to invest in this country.

Recently, a four-day long conference of domestic and foreign investors has ended with a grand event. Such a big conference of investors has never been held before in the history of this country. This has undoubtedly been possible because of the image of the international personality, Chief Adviser Dr Muhammad Yunus. A gleaming picture of the future of Bangladesh has emerged in this conference. About 450 investors participated in the conference. All of them have returned to their respective countries with positive ideas about Bangladesh. A network of government officials and domestic investors has also been formed along with foreign investors. At the conference, the newly appointed BIDA Executive Chairman Chowdhury Ashik Mahmud Bin Harun, drew special attention of foreign investors. At the end of the conference, it was understood that a long-term pipeline has been created for domestic and foreign investment. It has also been confirmed that continuous communication will be maintained with the institutions that have made investment proposals or promises. However, the investors mentioned a few challenges. The main two challenges are policy continuity and availability of resources. Corruption has also been considered a challenge.

If the essence of the investors' conference is captured, we may not have to struggle to build a beautiful Bangladesh in the future. More investment means more employment. There is a lot of unemployment in the country. The era we are going through is that of demographic dividend. Ending unemployment means moving up the gear of the country's progress. In reality, we have been able to utilize very little of the immense potential that Bangladesh has had since gaining independence 53 years ago. The reason for this failure is the lack of foresight in the political leadership and the tendency to prioritise party interests. The current government does not have these two weaknesses. As a result, we can hope for a prosperous Bangladesh under the current leadership.

What is important now is to create a truly business-friendly environment to gain the confidence of investors. We need to focus on ensuring that foreign investors do not get caught up in bureaucratic complications and that the Ease of Doing Business indicators keep rising. The most important thing is to maintain political and social stability. It goes without saying that investors will be hesitant to invest in Bangladesh for an unstable and uncertain future. We will appeal to the leadership of political parties to be sincere in maintaining political stability in the country. The current interim government must be given the opportunity to work smoothly until the elections. Otherwise, the unprecedented investment conference will have no significance. Dr Mumtazur Rahman Dawood, COO of the American company Bangla US LLC, spoke to Time News at the investment conference. He said that a hospital and fertilizer factory will be built in Bangladesh with an investment of Tk26,000 crore. A 300-bed hospital, with all the high-quality services, will be built with an investment of Tk19,002 billion. Dr Mumtazur Rahman Daud said that a fertilizer factory will be built in Chittagong at a cost of $600 million. And these plans were made after Bangladesh changed on 5 August last year. This is the right time to invest.

Representatives of companies from different countries, who participated in the investment conference, are prioritizing the pharmaceutical, renewable energy and agricultural sectors of Bangladesh. The Dutch financial institution FMO is choosing the agricultural and energy sectors of Bangladesh to pour funds in a risk-free investment environment. Prisen Prahladsingh, the company's agriculture, food and water investment officer for Asia region, said, "We are ready to invest here based on what we know about Bangladesh."

Pacific Energy, a company that has invested Tk12,000 crore in the renewable energy sector, is of the same opinion. Syed Ashraf Farooqui Sunny, representative of Pacific Energy in the United States, said, "Work is underway on a project to install 1 thousand megawatt solar power panels. This is a US-based investment of about a billion dollars."

The ongoing reform activities in the financial sector are attracting foreign investors to Bangladesh, said Md Hafizur Rahman, administrator of the apex business organization FBCCI. According to him, investors are attracted by the reforms and good governance being established in the country. Entrepreneurs participating in the conference observed that foreign companies will be interested in joint investments if the energy crisis of domestic companies and the weakness of the banking sector are resolved, and the services provided by the National Board of Revenue (NBR) are made easier.

During the previous government, the flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) declined. The economy’s growth trajectory did not have foreign investment support. Although the GDP growth rate has been increasing over the past few years, until 5 August, the positive figures were yet to attract enough foreign investors. Foreign investment has not increased to 2% of GDP.

The United Nations Organization for Trade and Development (UNCTAD) published a report in 2018. The report shows that foreign investment in Bangladesh decreased by nearly 7.3% in 2017 compared to the previous year. While foreign direct investment in the country was $2.33 billion in 2016, it decreased to about $2.16 billion in 2017. As a result, Bangladesh is ranked fifth on attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) among the top five least developed countries (LDCs). The UNCTAD report shows that foreign investment in Myanmar increased by 45% to $4.3 billion in 2017, which was the highest among the LDCs. Then came Ethiopia, Cambodia, Mozambique, and Bangladesh. Among these five countries, FDI increased only in Myanmar and Cambodia. The remaining three countries saw decreases. Among these five countries, Bangladesh is ahead of only the African country Mozambique in terms of economic growth rate. During this period, Mozambique's average growth rate stood at 5.14 percent and Bangladesh's at 6.93 percent.

In fact, Bangladesh's high growth trend is a recent achievement. In 2016 (2015-16 fiscal year), Bangladesh's GDP growth rate exceeded 7 percent for the first time. In other words, the GDP growth rate was not yet sustainable enough to attract FDI as expected. And various studies have proven that there is a positive relationship between FDI and GDP growth. A high GDP growth rate is an important indicator to understand how dynamic a country's economy is and how the consumer class is growing in that country. It also indicates the future prospects of a developing economy. In addition, if FDI comes in more, it also plays a role in increasing the GDP growth rate at some point. It is true that the total foreign direct investment flows worldwide collapsed last year. Total FDI worldwide fell to $1.43 trillion in 2017, down 23 percent compared with 2016. Foreign investment in LDCs as a group decreased by 17 percent. Considering that, it may be a relief that there has not been a single disaster in foreign investment for Bangladesh. It is also true that foreign investment has increased in some countries, although it has decreased in most countries.

As per Bangladesh's Seventh Five-Year Plan, policymakers expect to attract large amounts of FDI. According to this plan document, the country needed to attract at least $6 billion in foreign investment annually during 2016-20, which the previous government was unable to do. The previous government failed to create investment-friendly infrastructure, develop the energy sector extensively, provide necessary facilities and support for setting up industries, and simplify rules and regulations. Therefore, the rate of foreign investment and private investment has not increased at the expected rate.

In other words, the various steps taken by the government have not yet been considered helpful enough for FDI. There are also various additional costs. In addition to limitations such as inadequate infrastructure and weak communication system, complex tax structure, delay in ports as well as various types of bribery and corruption are bound to increase the cost of any investment. For these reasons, a large part of FDI is actually reinvestment of income and profits earned from existing or ongoing investments. According to Bangladesh Bank's calculations in 2023, as much as half of foreign investment is reinvestment.

Again, whatever FDI was available might not had facilitated the expected outcome. When calculating FDI flows, it is important to note how much technology and technical knowledge is transferred with this investment, how much sustainable and quality employment is created, and how much local value addition capacity increased. These were not clearly stated in the central bank data during the past government’s rule. In reality, Bangladesh was gradually losing its involvement in global value chains (GVC).