Given the current state of the economy, there is no doubt that we badly need FDI coming into Bangladesh. It appears that the new Government is also very sincere in this matter with visible efforts.
Going by the sound-bytes so far, it seems the Government is determined to carry out the painful reforms that are essential to make way for large volume of FDI. However, beyond the long pending reforms across the economy, we, as a nation, need to make honest reflection on our true appetite for FDI.
The Bangladesh Investment Summit 2025 held in April, 2025 is a good starting point. In that Summit, our Executive Chairman for Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA), Ashik Chowdhury, made a pitch before the foreign investors to make a case for Bangladesh in eloquent and well articulate English.
Rather than appreciating the challenges and discussing way out for bringing FDI in a meaningful manner, our public intellectuals took to attacking Mr. Ashik by taunting him with poor FDI figures following his presentation. This only begs the question, whether the people who are shaping our mind, are shaping or scrambling our mind.
Moving on, recently, Bangladesh Biman placed an order for 14 aircrafts from Boeing at a cost of $3.7Bn. Again, the same set of public intellectuals were up in arms to voice their grave concerns over this large order. Many of them termed it as an attempt to sell out the country.
But while raising concerns felt justified, we never discussed how the foreign carriers keep on adding the number of flights to and from Dhaka, while Biman struggles to operate its small fleet of aircraft profitably. Did we analyze if Biman was to operate to its full potential how many aircrafts it would have needed!?
Agreed, this is more of a trade matter than FDI, but this is quite indicative of how we analyze our foreign deals.
Then there is the much talked about US- Bangladesh Reciprocal Trade Agreement signed on 9th February. The entire intelligentsia were quick to dismiss this as a one-sided agreement. Let’s agree that the agreement is one-sided, but are we not getting anything out of the deal!? Besides, there is no discussion on how we can generate maximum value out of the things that went our way in the deal.
When discussions surfaced on letting a globally renowned foreign operator manage the container handling at Mooring Container Terminal, our pundits shouted, it will compromise our national security and thereby our sovereignty.
This global port operator happens to operate in many countries, but none of those countries have complained about losing their sovereignty to this company.
By bringing up such non-arguments, we unnecessarily create confusion among people. What we needed to analyze was whether the foreign operator will benefit Bangladesh and if so, how and by how much, given our development trajectory for the future.
When foreign investors come to Bangladesh, they naturally take up space in our economy. If we are not comfortable with the idea of conceding economic space to foreign investors, we are never going to be able to attract any meaningful level of FDI.
The telecom sector offers an interesting case study in this connection. Despite massive interest from the foreign investors of the telecom operators, FDI has been barred into a large part of the eco-system since 2008. No other country has such provisions in place.
Bangladesh had essentially curved out a large chunk of the telco eco-system for local investors only. This has only benefited a handful of local investors while the country missed out on valuable FDI and the subscribers missed out on better quality of service.
We can continue with this kind of FDI mindset, but then we have to remain happy with FDI figures like $1.78bn, while Uganda managed $3.4bn in 2025. But when we compare ourselves with Vietnam- a GDP size similar to ours, we find them drawing $27.6bn of FDI in the same year. Vietnam doesn’t seem to be concerned about losing their sovereignty by inviting large scale FDI.
We certainly need hard reform, but we also need all of us to behave in a way that contributes to improve the business climate. If we are seen to be bickering over non-issues when assessing potential FDI opportunities, the foreign investors will naturally feel put off even if we carry out all the necessary reforms.
It doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t raise our concerns and agree to everything the foreign investors demand of us. Rather, we need to sound more reasonable in our thinking. We need to be able to see things from multiple perspectives and fix a path that emboldens our public and the private sector to negotiate the best possible deals for us.
