The Bangladesh Export Processing Zones Authority (BEPZA) has received a robust response from both local and foreign investors, signing new investment agreements with 26 companies in the first eight months of the current fiscal year 2024-25 (FY25), reports BSS.
"In FY 2024-25 (July 24-February 25), BEPZA signed lease agreements with 26 companies interested to invest a total of US$418.73 million in Bangladesh, despite various challenges due to different political and global issues," said BEPZA Executive Chairman Major General Abul Kalam Mohammad Ziaur Rahman.
The BEPZA executive chairman said this in an interview with the national news agency BSS at his office on the overall investment scenario in the country and the moves to attract more investments.
At present, the BEPZA chief said, there are some 560 companies in Export Processing Zones (EPZs) and Economic Zone (EZ) under BEPZA, of which 448 are operational and 112 are under implementation.
As per statistics of BEPZA, during the July-February period of FY25, these companies have already invested $173.78 million, of which $129.73 million has come from foreign direct investment (FDI).
"This achievement highlights BEPZA's effective investment promotion strategies and its ability to attract both local and foreign investors. BEPZA is striving to increase foreign direct investment and will keep contributing to it," he added.
Ziaur informed that the total area of the eight EPZs and BEPZA Economic Zone is only 3,445 acres, which have already drawn investments from 38 different nations.
He laid emphasis on exploring FDI in the energy and infrastructure, ICT and electronics, agribusiness, food processing, pharma-chemicals and healthcare sectors.
"We've some limitations -- space limitation, communication infrastructure, old fashioned policies, etc. However, we're working on these issues," he added.
Describing the BEPZA's role in boosting Bangladesh's export sector, Ziaur Rahman said that the operational enterprises of eight EPZs under BEPZA exported goods worth $5,512.02 million in the last eight months of the current fiscal FY25.
"The industries of EPZs have been playing an important role in the national export of Bangladesh. In the last fiscal year (2023-24), export of EPZ enterprises was $7.1 million, which was 16 percent of the country's total national exports," he noted.
He mentioned that BEPZA is planning to set up some new EPZs in different parts of the country which will increase the volume of exports.
"Moreover, service simplification procedures are going on through digitization and automation. As a result, new investors will be encouraged to invest more resulting in increased volume of exports," he mentioned.
Besides, he said, BEPZA has requested the government to provide export subsidies to the EPZ enterprises which may eventually increase the exports volume.
Bd-pratidin English/Tanvir Raihan
