Bangladesh co to invest $15 bn in India
Agartala, August 3 (IBNS): PRAN (Programme for Rural Advancement Nationally), a leading exporter of processed agro products of Bangladesh, has announced its plans of investing $15-billion in India.
The announcement was made at a press conference in Agartala on Monday by the Deputy Managing Director of PRAN, Ahsan Khan Chowdhury, who said,
Given a chance I would like to invest $15-billion in India because I feel the marker is ready here and the Northeast is the market which has enough opportunities. It is not just about selling in Northeast but also buying from here.
Chowdhury said PRAN has already purchased an acre of land in the Bodhjungnagar industrial estate of Tripura for setting up a food processing centre at a cost of $10-billion and the project shall be completed within a span of three years.
After the liberalisation of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) removing the ban on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) from Bangladesh in 2009 this will be the biggest invest of any Bangladeshi individual or organization in India.
Indias decision to allow investment from Bangladesh will lead towards a stable and secure trade relation between India and Bangladesh, said Chowdhury.
He added, Whether we (Bangladesh) like it or not, our biggest trading partner will be India because our neighbour is a very large and fast growing country. Whatever may be the socio-economy or the political parties saying, it is the traders who are going to bring the countries together.
Chowdhury urged India for removal of non-tariff-barriers to expedite the export of Bangladeshi products and said Bangladesh is more responsible for the small volume business with India.
He said, Our problem is our legal and political systems in Bangladesh and the regulatory system in India. We understand the consumers are ready, the raw materials are ready, but this is the fallacy that we have in our part of the world. In other places the markets are not ready, but here the regulations, interaction, processes and restrictions arenot ready."
The India-Bangladesh border stretches 4,096 kilometer. The two countries are geographically as also culturally linked to each other.
Roughly 161 million people of Bangladesh depend on number of items of day to day use produced in India. Recently India and Bangladesh has promised for better relations in security, power, business and connectivity sector.
Bangladesh co to invest $15 bn in India