Bangladesh and globalisation

By Golam Ashraf DOHS Baridhara, Dhaka
25 November 2004, 18:00 PM
During the Industrial Revolution many parts of the world had no factories but Bengal was fortunate to have some foreign, local and government investments. Some examples are the dockyards and factories in Kidderpore, heavy industries in Durgapur and Asansol towns, tea gardens and tea industries in Jalpaiguri and Sylhet, textile mills, dockyards, pucca jute presses and a tannery in Narayanganj, a glass factory in Hatkhola, Dacca, cotton mills in Kushtia town and a sugar factory and the lone brewery at Darshana. The railway workshop in Saidpur was one of the major investments of the British rulers.

But industrialisation must be a planned thing. The growth of industries like RMG, knitting, dyeing-finishing, cement etc. in an unplanned manner will eventually cause 'unfair competition' and loss to our scarce Venture Capital. However, more EPZs alongside our major sea and land ports, and balanced agricultural and industrial investments across our country, with the aim of producing quality goods at cheaper prices, could rightly place us in the global foreign direct investment (FDI) and foreign trade (FT).