Partnership between pvt sectors of both countries can be a game-changer

Bangladesh seeks Dutch investments in agriculture, water and light engineering -- the areas where The Netherlands has superior technologies that Bangladesh needs for boosting productivity and exportability in eco-friendly way.

"Large share of Dutch economy is based on agriculture. It also faces serious challenges of climate change, but the country has been doing extraordinarily well in these sectors due to its technological innovation," said Riaz Hamidullah, Bangladesh Ambassador to The Netherlands.

He said this just ahead of two-day Bangladesh-Netherlands Investment Summit 2020 beginning today.

The Bangladesh embassy in The Netherlands with support from the Dutch government is organising the event that will feature three themes -- Agriculture & Agro-Food, Water and Maritime and Light Engineering.

Private sector business from The Netherlands and Bangladesh will participate in the virtual event where more than 50 Dutch companies have already registered, Riaz Hamidullah told this correspondent yesterday.

Explaining the background of the event, the ambassador said Bangladesh and Netherlands have many similarities. Agriculture in both the countries share the challenges of climate change as they have large coastlines, while they also have large agriculture sectors.

The west European country that is one third of Bangladesh in terms of size exports more than $100 billion worth food to the global market. The major agriculture-based exports of the country include chili, tomato, cucumber and apple.

 Aside from that, a significant portion of Dutch agricultural exports consists of fresh-cut plants, flowers, and flower bulbs, with the Netherlands exporting two-thirds of the world's total.

With only some 17 million plus population, The Netherlands is the world's 16th largest economy.

"Much of this is because of Netherland's efficient technology. This is where we lag behind in Bangladesh," said Riaz Hamidullah.

He said as Bangladesh's exports still now heavily depend on readymade garment and needs diversification as the country moves to become one of top 30 economies in ten years.

Agriculture is a real potential sector from that perspective. Citing an example, he said post-harvest loss of fruits in Bangladesh is 30 to 40 percent.

"Imagine if that loss is zero and the fruit is value added and is packaged in a way to be exported to the global market. This can earn huge amount of foreign currency."

Not only that, augmenting productivity, food processing, packaging and cold storage facilities for connecting the international supply chain are the issues most important for Bangladesh.

Fish and livestock are the other two major areas that need massive change for boosting productivity and exportability, which is possible through technological innovation.

"You see, Bangladesh's Ilish is world famous. But, the problem for us is packaging for international market," he said, adding that these are the areas where Dutch businesses can come in and invest.

For long, Dutch businesses have not been finding their counterparts in Bangladesh. Now, they have found a number of Bangladeshi conglomerates. Strategic partnership between the private sectors of both the countries can be a game-changer, Riaz Hamidullah said.

Apart from food and agro-processing technologies, he said, The Netherlands has reached its excellence in managing its coast and continues to innovate. As the future industries will need to be eco-friendly, Dutch technologies can help Bangladeshi industries in a big way.

"Bangladesh has prepared Delta Plan 2100 with support from The Netherlands. Our general understanding is that water management is building dams or other infrastructure. It is not. It is more of how efficiently you use water. The international buyers in future will ask about the amount of water used for producing a product before buying it," the ambassador said.

"We are not talking about typical financial investment. In the summit, private sectors of both the countries will exchange ideas on how they can have partnership, introduce technologies that will be win-win," Hamidullah said.