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Editorial

Good news for CEPZ

Now, infrastructure and port efficiency must be the priority
2 October 2010, 18:00 PM
EDITORIAL
We are certainly pleased that the Chittagong EPZ has been given a high ranking by the UK-based journal FDI. That despite all our problems, multifarious in nature, the CEPZ has been recognised in a survey of 700 economic zones as the fourth best in terms of economic potential and third best in the competitive category is certainly a moral boost for us. And indeed we do think that such a placing of the CEPZ can well be taken as a sign of the long way our investment-related activities can go. More importantly, though, we believe that the ranking should act as a spur to us in the matter of streamlining things on the national economic scene through injecting more vitality into other economic zones in the country. The ranking achieved by the CEPZ in FDI magazine is without question an acknowledgement of the investment-friendly conditions we have in Bangladesh. For the last many years, successive governments have consistently carried the policy of investment, both local and foreign, forward as a way of stressing our need to come level with the rest of the world where economic steps are concerned. Now this ranking should rightly be seen as a vindication of all those efforts. However, it is also proper that we do not rest on our laurels because the FDI ranking refers only to the potential of the CEPZ. What we in Bangladesh must now do is translate that potential or possibility into reality. For that to be done, there are certain priorities that need shaping and implementing. The first of course is a guarantee of political stability that will permit free, undisturbed economic activities all across the country. The agitational nature of our politics has, therefore, to be discarded if the economic future of the people is to be secured by the state and its essential components. And then comes the very important question of infrastructure. In the world of fast competition we happen to be part of, no amount of appreciation for the potential we have will do us any good unless we have the very fundamentals of a modern, working economy in place. That economy must, of course, be one connected to the broad global economy. Finally comes the question of port efficiency. Our ports are yet to arrive at a stage where they can approximate other ports around the world in terms of handling goods. It is therefore of huge importance that the Chittagong port be transformed into a sphere where total efficiency and absolute professionalism serve as its underpinnings. The FDI journal ranking cheers us. Let it now be followed by what needs to be done on the ground.

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