Develop corridors and hubs to re-imagine and invigorate Bangladesh

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Bangladesh needs to make a quantum leap in vision and investment to make the most of its potential.

Our economy still lags behind the growth rate it could achieve, were it not held back by corruption and poor infrastructure. This is evident in the painfully slow pace of improvements Bangladesh is making on indicators such as the WEF’s Global Competitiveness Index, where it only ranks 107th among 140 countries.

The country needs to make a breakthrough in encouraging investment if we are to attain the improvements it needs in infrastructure and productivity, to maximise the benefits of the nation’s demographic dividend.

We believe the best way to accomplish this is to make a concerted effort to shift towards a “hubs and corridors” model of  development that spreads economic opportunity throughout the country.

It is long overdue to move beyond seeing Bangladesh as a primarily rural nation with one large capital city, in which services and jobs are overly concentrated. Decentralisation is essential both to spread benefits of development across the wider nation and to reduce crippling pressures on Dhaka.

We can and must move beyond reliance on concentrating industry in Dhaka and a handful of ad hoc large projects such as the Padma Bridge. Our nation’s small land area means that building faster inter-city highways and railways can readily allow us to develop a strong network of multiple large urban centres.

To do this efficiently, the government must learn from the bottlenecks which have kept development overly concentrated in Dhaka. In order to make other cities super attractive to investors and developers, the government needs to ensure they have better civic services, more prestigious universities, and their own ring roads and EPZ/investment zones, as well as good links to Dhaka and the nation’s ports.

Planned correctly with vision and foresight, such moves, combined with incentives to spread industry across the country, should boost the economy by attracting new investment and kick-starting new hubs for growth around the nation.

Not only will this directly enable more citizens to benefit from economic growth, but it will enhance Bangladesh’s ability to benefit from moves to improve regional connectivity, where our geographical location between the markets of South and Southeast Asia makes it a logical focus for international investment.

Source: Dhaka Tribune