Beza to introduce business continuity plan for economic zones

Bangladesh Economic Zones Authority (BEZA) is planning to introduce business continuity plan (BCP) in economic zones to protect investment from disaster related loses and develop institutional mechanism for promoting resilience in business.

As part of this initiative, an inception workshop on business continuity plan was held at a city hotel today jointly organised by the Programming Division of Bangladesh Planning Commission and Beza.

The Programming Division is supporting Beza for this piloting with the assistance of National Resilience Program (NRP) technically supported by the United Nations Development programme and funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) of the government of Sweden.

Under this piloting initiative, guidelines will be developed for area specific and enterprise level business continuity plan and capacity development training on BCP will be imparted to the business administrators and Beza officials.

According to BEZA, initially the BCP will be piloted in Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Shilpanagar, Mirshari, Chattogram and Meghna Industrial Economic Zone in Narayanganj.

Rakib Ahsan, team leader for BCP consultants' team, shared the working approaches of the continuity plan.

The inception workshop was chaired by Mohammad Erfan Sharif, executive member of the Beza, while Nasima Begum, member of the Socio-Economic Infrastructure Division of the Planning Commission, spoke at the workshop.

Among others, Khandker Ahsan Hossain, chief of programming division; Sudipto Mukerjee, resident representative of UNDP Bangladesh, spoke at the workshop.

Fifty representatives from different ministries, divisions and business associations participated in this event.