United News of Bangladesh

Chairman of the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) Prof Rehman Sobhan has said Bangladesh needs to respond to the changing global economic order by focusing primarily on its economic interests and urged the country to integrate its value chains more strongly with the growing opportunities in Asia. He said Bangladesh’s position as a relatively minor player in the global system gave it flexibility, and its interest lay in a stable world order where external factors will not frustrate its economic opportunities. “What we need, obviously, to do is to do the most obvious things, to strengthen our value chains across the world,” he said while speaking on the "New International Economic Disorder: Implications for Bangladesh" on the opening day of the three-day international conference – Bay of Bengal Conversation – at a city hotel on Saturday. Sobhan said Bangladesh has remained constrained by a narrow range of export markets, while its major import sources and, increasingly, its sources of capital are located within the Asian region.