Private sector investment vital

The world economy is largely regulated by the private sector to uphold the theory of free economy hence its overall growth depends on regular investment by the sector players. To keep the bandwagon of economy rolling, new businesses, new industries, new startups and new financing institutes must come up to reinforce the sector. At the same time the established ones will have to be innovative enough to stay in the race.

Sometimes, a major crisis may cause a stalemate in the economic activities of a country but policymakers will have to be quick in finding ways to circumnavigate the problem and take the ship to safe waters. It needs no emphasising that Bangladesh is going through a major crisis phase with Covid-19 that it never faced before. So, the onus is on the policy pundits to take pragmatic decisions best for the economy.

It is disconcerting to note that for the last five years the rate of private sector investment has been dropping gradually in Bangladesh. According to a BBS data private investment fell by 21.25 per cent in fiscal21 which is the lowest in the last five years, and public investment has increased but the implementation of ADP has been hovering around 58 per cent for the last 11 months. We believe that the drop by 21.25 per cent is a big one and we hope attention of the ministries concerned has been drawn to this fact.    

We are aware of the devastating blow that Covid-19 has dealt us in the last two years, with the never stopping cavalcade of death and destruction of our economy. A research finding says that 80 per cent of the people had to cut their usual family food expenses. Many essential food items like milk, butter, bread, jam, jelly and meat have been dropped from the shopping list. And this is having an adverse effect on the health of growing children. This needs to be said that many mid-level employees have lost their jobs as employers failed to see profit during the pandemic and opted for reducing employee strength.     

Eminent economists along with the government policymakers will have to undertake research to ascertain why investment in the private sector has been dropping for the last five years. They have to go deep into the roots of the problem, analyse the causes and finally come up with solutions. It is they who will provide the guidelines to the businesspeople so that they may feel encouraged to come forward and invest their money in new ventures.

There is no denying that the economy of a country needs the growth of the private sector and their performance for its own sustenance. If we look at the readymade garment sector, we see that about 40 years ago some courageous private entrepreneurs had set up the country’s first garment factories with the aim to export quality products. If they and other colleagues had not invested money back then, we would not have been earning nearly $35 billion in foreign currency annually.  Today, RMG is a big success story we feel so proud to share with the global business community.   

We want robust growth of the private sector and full support of all stakeholders in this regard.