14.3.05

Bangladesh: liberalização e crescimento económico

Bangladesh has experienced a boom in foreign investment in the country over the last two years. The country expects $1 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) in 2006 with another $2 billion likely to flow in the following two years. Bangladesh is harnessing foreign capital and the private sector to build a much needed infrastructure.

(...)

A country of 140 million people, Bangladesh is a free-market economy that has experienced a more than 5% growth rate in recent years. FDI accounts for 60% of the investment in the country's service sector, Rahman said. Weak infrastructure is a roadblock for foreign investment, so the government plans to tackle the problem by allowing foreign investors to develop infrastructure on a 'build-own-transfer' basis.


(...)

Despite the risk of natural disasters like floods, and political feuding between the country's two major political parties, the investment situation of Bangladesh remains attractive to foreign investors. Bangladesh with its liberal economic environment is booming. Could this be a lesson for Africa? To bring in foreign capital to build the infrastructure and run it in the private sector, offer the opportunity for a profit, for a fixed term. At the end of that term ownership could be transferred to a privatisation agency. It would then be ready to be privatised at a discount in a Thatcher-style popular privatisation subscribed to by the public - giving citizens a real ownership stake in the economy.