Hon’ble Ministers, 

His Excellency Salman F Rahman, Hon’ble Adviser to the Prime Minister on Private Industry and Investment, 

His Excellency Ito Naoki, Ambassador of Japan to Bangladesh 

 

Chief Executive Officer, Standard Chartered Bank Bangladesh Ltd. 

 

Distinguished Guests,  

 

Ladies and Gentlemen,

 

 

Assalamu Alaikum. It is indeed a great pleasure to be a part of this summit and share thoughts with this august audience. I take this privilege to convey my sincere thanks to the Standard Chartered Bank for arranging this summit. It is, indeed, timely and focused. 

 

Ladies and Gentlemen,  

Bangladesh deeply values the strong, wide and deep layers of relations that Bangladesh shares with Japan. Though we are going to celebrate the golden jubilee of establishing diplomatic relations between these two countries next year, the bond of mutual understanding and warm relations between the people of Bangladesh and Japan goes back at least four hundred years when Japanese fine artists carried back a widely-used colour from Bengal to Japan, still known as the “Bengaru (Bengal) colour”.  

 

 

The friendship between Bangladesh and Japan, as nation-states, which we enjoy today was rooted in the visit of the Father of the Nation of Bangladesh Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to Japan in 1972. 

 

 

When Bangladesh got its independence, I was as a Private Secretary to the State Minister of Commerce and Trade in early 1970s and on those days, we had to import everything from abroad, from pin to ship and as Bangladesh was termed as a bottomless basket with no hope of survival, many of our friendly countries were hesitant even to supply goods to us. Even on those difficult days, Japanese exporters continued to supply us good, at times, with deferred payment. They were truly ‘ a friend in need, a friend indeed.’

 

 

 

Ladies and Gentlemen,

 

 

Focus on Peace and Economic diplomacy has always been Bangabandhu’s Foreign Policy and he ....said and I quote” Peace is imperative for economic development. Currently, we are pursuing a very consolidated approach towards the economic domain of diplomacy. The approach or our Economic Diplomacy package is multi-pronged, multi-spatial and multi-dimensional. We have been working with the relevant Ministries of Commerce and Industries and ERD; we have been partnering with the investment promotion bodies – such as BIDA and BEZA, BEPZA and the rest; we have been engaging the Federations and other Trade Bodies both within the country and also the Bangladesh-Japan joint forums; and last but not the least, we have established a dedicated cell for international trade, investment and technology inside the Foreign Office to coordinate our domestic and foreign endeavours for better results. 

 

 

We are working on creating and furthering our engagements in the domain of international trade and investment. We are envisaging our engagements with the complex political theatre of the world in the thematic framework of Technology, Markets, and Organisations (TMO). We are taking initiatives for helping define a prioritized Strategic Business Policy Framework for Bangladesh and analyzing markets and actors which could host products, services, and composite/aggregate solutions with high revenue-generating and revenue-sustaining capabilities which can also assist in gainful employment generation and take all those to seamlessly integrating into the global value chain.

 

 

We wish to dive deep into the world of brands and the branding ecosystems so that the consumers get the value they paid for. We wish to find our complementarities with the global corporates in a way that is congenial to our governance, economic and environmental ambitions. We want to diversify our investment portfolio, our products and export market.

 

 

We have a long history of resilience in the business and governance areas and we wish to ensure that Bangladesh remains on top of the list for the Comity of Nations whenever or wherever business, trade or administrative solutions are needed. We wish to serve the global markets - both industrial and consumer - in the best ways possible. All our missions abroad have been instructed accordingly to support business and economic initiatives.

 

 

One of the major avenues that we are looking at is the ICT sector. ICT sector does not only confine itself to the business of computers and communication.  Rather, it is slowly proliferating into every sphere of human action and even thoughts. We would like to create a knowledge-based economy. Thoughts ultimately define our actions and we wish to leverage the design capabilities that we have in Bangladesh to penetrate into the global markets for thoughts. A leadership which is not hesitant to short term inconveniences for long term creation of inclusive prosperity. We are lucky that we have a Prime Minister amongst us who is globally acknowledged for her remarkable performance in bringing a whole nation out of poverty and into a middle-income status in just less than twelve years. The development miracle of Sheikh Hasina remains a story to be told. It is the story of Bangladesh.

 

 

Ladies and Gentlemen, 

 

As you all know, while the world continues to struggle with unprecedented effects of Covid-19 pandemic, Bangladesh has been able to achieve early recovery and been able to maintain the economic growth. Though the GDP growth rate of Bangladesh plummeted to 5.2% in 2020 from 8.2% in 2019, there has been a sign of recovery in Bangladesh economy supported by increasing export, strong remittance inflow, successfully ongoing vaccination program, and most importantly by the stimulus program launched by the Government of Bangladesh. While over the last decade, Bangladesh successfully maintained an average growth rate nearly 7% higher to its neighbours like India, Pakistan and even China. Japan has been a trustworthy development partner for Bangladesh and provided support for many infrastructural development projects. The strategic geographical location of Bangladesh at the crossroads of South and Southeast Asia and at the northern apex of the Bay of Bengal makes Bangladesh and demographic dividend, abundance of labour, stable political condition, astute leadership, infrastructural development, resilient and diligent population, emerging market of 165 million people with strong connectivity with its neighbours have made Bangladesh an attractive investment destination, where return on investment is relatively high. 

 

  

 

Ladies and Gentlemen,

 

 

We emphasize on building quality infrastructure in power, energy, and connectivity across all modes of communication. To ensure connectivity in all parts of Bangladesh and with its neighbours, the current government took the initiative to build the Padma bridge, the tunnel under the Karnaphuli River, doubling the Dhaka-Chittagong Highway, expanding the railroads, elevated expressways, metro rail in the capital, dredging of all river routes, building deep seaports, modernising land ports and seaports, building sea terminals, multiple international airports, roads, rails and water connectivity with BBIN, BIMSTEC and ASEAN. At the same time, we have ensured that our agriculture grows, in a way that benefits the small and marginal farmers. We are also trying to connect the agriculture sector to the global value chain. We are extensively introducing our youth to ICT and all forms of IT-enabled skill- based services – so that they can leapfrog and catch up with the rest of the world in the digital domain. We want to participate equitably in the design space which would one day lead us to an AI enabled global economy. In all these areas and beyond, our government and our private sector continue to work together for bringing in innovative, home-grown solutions to developmental challenges, in spite of limited resources.

 

 

Distinguished Members of the Audience,

 

 

Japan is one of our leading partners in the plethora of the mega-projects in terms of finance, construction, capitalisation and technology.  There are many areas where Japan and Bangladesh could engage as partners in development – be that in the development of infrastructure, or be that in incubation of emerging sectors like ICT. Bangladesh welcomes investment, trade and engagement at both G-to-G and P-to-P levels. Along with traditional sectors like Readymade garments, leather goods, Bangladesh is very interested to cooperate and have partnerships with Japan at different level and increase bilateral trade volume in Energy sector, IT/ITES, Fintech, Pharmaceuticals, Automotive and Light Engineering, Small and medium enterprises, plastic products, jute and textiles, FMCG and biomedical engineering products. We are very much enthusiastic to be engaged in business, production and technology transfer in modern technology domains such as, but not limited to Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotics, Advanced manufacturing and multidimensional printing, Fintech, Advanced materials, Semiconductor Design/pre-fab/fabrication, New computing technologies,  Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies, Internet of Things (IoT), Virtual and augmented realities, Machine learning, Deep learning, Design space, Biotechnologies, Neurotechnologies, Biometrics etc. 

 

 

As you are aware that, the trade relation between Japan and Bangladesh is now at a unique height with a trade volume of 3 billion USD while export to Japan is 1.2 Billon USD and import from Japan is 1.8 billion USD. Japan is among the top 5 foreign investors in Bangladesh according to the cumulative Foreign Direct Investment. Over the last 50 years, we have received US$ 16 Billion funding from Japan for several development projects in Bangladesh. We greatly appreciate this. There are already 320 Japanese companies   engaged in ready-made garments, trading, development projects, service sector and private investment in Bangladesh. And we are expecting a new wave of Japanese origin companies and joint ventures after the Japanese economic zone at Araihazar will be ready in 2022. Bangladesh deeply appreciate Japan's contribution and support in constructing more than 550 bridges, 117 cyclone shelters, supporting hundreds of SMEs and hundreds ( 526) ongoing technical cooperation projects. In addition, our young and highly hardworking workers, both male and female, can contribute to the development of Japan especially in service sector.

 

 

While Japan is a very important development partner of Bangladesh, Bangladesh is also an important source of intermediate materials and a significant trade partner of Japan, as well as a noteworthy destination for investment. Leveraging on Bangladesh’s intrinsic geographic, economic, demographic and other plusses, I strongly believe that both countries can reap mutual benefit further by exploring further trade opportunities through improved connectivity between these two countries. It would pave the way forward to the greater economic strength and unhindered movement for people of these two regions. 

 

    

 

I hope that the friendly and productive relation between Bangladesh and Japan will reach to a new height in the upcoming years. We will find our “ikagai” in what we do together! 

 

 

Long live Bangladesh-Japan friendship! 

 

Joi Bangla ! Joi Bangabandhu !