Finnish eye Bangladesh as a potential investment destination
Finnish businesses yesterday expressed their keen interest in pursuing investment and joint partnerships with Bangladesh.
They showed interest in areas such as education, ICT, artificial intelligence, financial instruments, health IT, renewable energy, sustainable forestry and smart agriculture.
They showed their interest in investing in Bangladesh at a discussion styled ‘Doing Business with Finland’ at the capital’s Pan Pacific Sonargaon hotel. The Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI) and Finnpartnership, a project of the Finland government, in cooperation with the embassy of Finland in New Delhi organised the discussion.
Muhammad Abdur Razzaque, agriculture minister, reaffirmed the government’s commitment to creating a conducive environment for foreign direct investment and looked forward to a higher degree of Finnish interest and investment in the country. He further highlighted Bangladesh’s successes in agriculture and climate change adaptation.
Sheikh Fazle Fahim, president of the FBCCI, emphasised Bangladesh’s stable macroeconomic growth trajectory and its development in the past decade.
“The FBCCI has been addressing some critical issues of our transitional economy including knowledge transfer for industrial revolution, artificial intelligence, regulatory planning, SDG goals, industry-academia gap assessment and reskilling,” Fahim also said.
The other issues that were discussed included strengthening people-to-people contact, investment and trade between the two countries that at present stands at $244.5 million.
Two presentations on ‘Finnpartnership and Finnfund Services’ and ‘Doing Business with Finland’ were made by Birgit Nevala, programme director of Finnpartnership, and Patrik Bredbacka, programme officer of Finnpartnership, respectively highlighting the business prospects between the two countries.
Titta Maja, director of the ministry of foreign affairs of Finland (Unit for South Asia), and Md Rejaul Kariem, FBCCI vice president, also addressed the event.