Bangladesh: the vision thing

At the end of my first column last month on “Brand Bangladesh”, I asked The Daily Star readers to vote on the favourite slogan that most effectively captured the dynamic message we as a country wanted to project about investment opportunities here. I received over 200 email responses both locally and internationally. Around 65percent of responses favoured “Bangladesh, the Next Asian Tiger”; a surprising second was “Bangladesh, the Original Asian Tiger”.
But catchy marketing without substance is a strategy doomed to failure. Indeed, in several meetings with both corporates and academics, following the Branding article, I have been warned that Bangladesh lacks a clear economic vision in terms of where it wants to go as an economy and how it intends to get there.
There is little doubt in my mind that the success of the previous Asian Tigers has been predicated on an economic vision. In many cases, this has been at government level. Witness Chinese paramount leader Deng Xiaoping's “Open Door” policy of the early 1980s in moving the communist economic system towards a more market- and export-based strategy. Vietnam, the current favourite of the global investors buying into the Asian economic miracle, adopted its “Doi Moi” policy (roughly translates as “change or something new”) back in 1986 that culminated in peak foreign direct investment (FDI) flows 10 years later. The Asian crisis hit Vietnam hard but the ability to grow the FDI flow from $ 2 billion in 2000 to $20 billion in 2007 underlines the important foundations laid by “Doi Moi”. Former Malaysian PM Mahathir adopted his “Vision 2020” strategy, aimed at moving the country from a developing to an advanced nation, in 1994.
But not all transformational economic vision comes at a government level. Take South Korea, which has just celebrated moving to a per capita GDP of $ 20,000, a near trebling in just a decade. Indeed in 1995, Korea had a per capita GDP of $ 10,000 that collapsed to $ 7800 in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian crisis. But Korea managed to re-invent itself despite the collapse in GDP and the crisis of national self-confidence. While the government played an important enabling role, it was the “Chaebol” or family conglomerates that had the “vision” to help the country accelerate to first world status. When we think of Korea now, we associate it with Samsung, LG and Hyundai. The private sector was the catalyst for the dramatic economic recovery.
India is probably a hybrid between the two models of public sector versus private sector economic vision. The economic crisis of 1992 forced a re-thinking of the socialist economic strategy, the “Hindu” rate of growth of 3 percent, and all the problems of the “License Raj” with a labyrinthine and suffocating bureaucratic apparatus. It took the vision of the then finance minister (now prime minister) Manmohan Singh to create the right environment for change that included cutting the excessive tariff barriers and regulatory constraints on foreign ownerships and repatriation of profits that was limiting FDI flows. Indeed when Bangladeshi private sector players express skepticism about the ability to work with policymakers to deliver necessary regulatory reforms, one need only look to India, whose bureaucracy in the early 1990s was no less unwieldy than Bangladesh's regulatory framework is today. This surely is evidence of what can be done when the public and private sectors develop a partnership and adopt a mindset of cooperation.
But the Indian success story was clearly not all down to government reforms. The private sector led by non-resident Indians (NRIs) returning from Silicon Valley to Bangalore, have also played a pivotal role. Family companies like Tata and Reliance have re-invented themselves. Wipro, now one of the world's leading IT and outsourcing companies, was originally an edible oil company.
So, does Bangladesh have to start from scratch in formulating its economic vision? Not at all. The 2006 CPD paper “Bangladesh Vision 2021” prepared under the Nagorik committee is an excellent and thought provoking summary of many of the key issues. The July 2007 World Bank report on “Bangladesh: Strategy for Sustained Growth” also provides plenty of food for thought. I would suggest anyone interested in developing a view on where the Bangladesh economy could be in 10 years time and how to get there should read these reports. They need to be supplemented by the private sector coming up with investment opportunities for foreign investors to put capital into.
The “Economic Vision Thing” is important and is not just a matter for domestic policymakers or academics. A collective focus between the public and private sectors on developing an economic vision for Bangladesh remains the foundation on which Bangladesh can become “The Next Asian Tiger”.

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The writer is the managing partner of Asian Tiger Capital Partners and formerly managing director and head of Global Macro Strategy at Citigroup, London.