British High Commissioner to Bangladesh Sarah Cooke on Sunday said Bangladesh has done a lot of changes in the last decade and its economy also advanced a lot.
In order to attract more foreign direct investment (FDI), she suggested that Bangladesh “needs to work more” on the policy reforms, sustainable and predictable policy regime, intellectual property right (IPR), alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and repatriation of profit related issues.
The British envoy said the UK is interested to work with Bangladesh regarding economic progress and climate change issues.
The High Commissioner who visited Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DCCI) said that the UK will extend its possible support to Bangladesh in successful graduation from the LDC to middle income country status.
But after the LDC graduation, to keep the export market safe, Bangladesh needs to diversify its exportable items other than RMG products.
She hoped that both trade and exports between the UK and Bangladesh would accelerate in the future.
Besides, the tax-GDP ratio of Bangladesh should be increased, she said.
Agriculture, Sea Food (shrimp), leather goods, light engineering especially bicycle and RMG have huge potential for Bangladeshi exporters in the UK market, the High Commissioner added.
She also stressed on producing quality products having international standards to grab international market.
Prioritizing strong trade and investment relations further, the envoy later invited Bangladeshi business delegations to the UK to enhance better connectivity.
Over 94% of export from Bangladesh to the UK concentrated on ready-made garments (RMG) products (USD 5.03 billion), according to DCCI.
Other than RMG products, few more items are also being exported to the UK, but their volume is not up to the expected level, said DCCI President Ashraf Ahmed at a bilateral meeting with the British High Commissioner.
Welcoming the British High Commissioner to DCCI, he said that the total bilateral trade between Bangladesh and UK reached USD 5.73 billion in FY2023.
The UK is the 3rd largest export destination and 26th largest import source of Bangladesh. In FY 2022-23, export from Bangladesh to UK was USD 5.31 billion and total import from UK was USD 415.32 million.
The UK is the second largest foreign investment source for Bangladesh followed by the USA with USD 3.04 billion FDI stock.
The potential of economic partnership between the UK and Bangladesh is very bright especially in the fields of finance, healthcare, Fin-tech, BPO, BPS, tourism, and education sectors.
Moreover, the UK can also transfer technical know-how, innovation and skills in ICT, Architecture, Healthcare sectors through joint venture partnership.
Both Bangladesh and the UK need to initiate and expand discussions for framing agreements at G2G level to boost bilateral trade and investment during the post LDC era.
Bilateral discussions need to reflect new priorities arising from Bangladesh’s economic transition, he said.