Create new business partnership with Bangladesh
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has urged the US investors to create a new business partnership to help Bangladesh become a middle income country by 2021.
"As we aspire to become a middle-income country by 2021, I call upon the US entrepreneurs to create new business partnerships by investing more to take Bangladesh-US relations to newer heights," she said.
The prime minister said this while addressing a luncheon hosted by US Chamber and US Business Council at Grand Hyatt Hotel here on Thursday.
Hasina said the current US investment in Bangladesh to the tune of US$ 331 million is much under its potential.
"Apart from energy and power sectors, there are some investments slowly building up in financial sectors. Yet we need more diverse group of US investors taking advantage of Bangladesh's liberal investment policy," she said.
The premier said her government has leapfrogged the liberal fiscal incentives for foreign investors.
"These include a most generous tax holiday, concessionary duty on import of machinery, remittance of royalty, 100 percent foreign equity, unrestricted exit policy, a full repatriation facility of dividend and capital on exit and many more," she said.
Hasina said her government has created seven Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) whereby foreign private companies can take lease of industrial land and set up labour intensive industry.
"We have more than 80 million young energetic workforce available for industrial recruitment as labour and we also have 160 million consumers as your market," she said.
Apart from power and energy sector, she said, the present government is keen on increasing FDI in our booming shipbuilding and recycling sectors, chemical fertilizers, automobile and light engineering, agro-processing, pharmaceuticals, ceramic, plastic and jute goods, ICT, marine resource extraction, tourism, medical equipment and telecommunication.
"We are also giving more thrust on establishment of knowledge based hi-tech industries and our vision is to transform Bangladesh into an industrialized Digitized Middle Income country by 2021 and a developed country by 2041," she said.
She said this would be in redeeming the pledge of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman for creating a Golden Bengal.
Hasina said the relations between Bangladesh and the US are deeply entrenched in common values, shared interests and mutual benefits.
She said the common values that Awami League government shares with the US government are peace, democracy and secularism.
"They are freedoms and human rights....they are freedom of speech, religion and expression, free media and enterprise. They are diversity, tolerance and women empowerment...they are our common resolve to root out terrorism and extremism and keep fundamentalism at bay," she said.
The prime minister mentioned that when she travels to New York to attend the UN General Assembly, she is advised by Bangladesh Ambassador to the United States to meet business and corporate leaders from the USA.
"Unless I am really time-constrained, my answer has been always been a 'yes'," she said.
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