Bangladesh Economic Zones Authority (BEZA) is going to begin the land development works of the Japanese Economic Zone (EZ) in December this year as all necessary procedures in this regard have almost been completed, reports BSS.
“Japanese EZ is being set up at Araihazar in Narayanganj on some 1,000 acres of land. We have already acquired 500 acres of land. Out of another the 500 acres, the acquisition of around 200 acres of land is under process,” a senior official, related to the EZ, told BSS. He said BEZA is going to appoint developer for land filling of the economic zone under a Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) project, titled “Infrastructure Development of the Japanese Economic Zone”.
“Tender process has already been completed. We will appoint a developer soon for land filling,” he added. The official hoped that the investors at the Japanese EZ would set up planned and environment-friendly industries. Through establishment of this EZ, he said, planned industrialization would be ensured side by side many new employment opportunities would be created.
After the exchange of visits of the Prime Ministers between the two countries in 2014, the number of Japanese inventors in Bangladesh is increasing day by day. Now, Japanese business community has started to pay attention to Bangladesh as the next destination of investment. Following this trend, the government of Bangladesh and JICA signed a loan agreement of Foreign Direct Investment Promotion Project (FDIPP), and Bangladesh government decided to establish Japanese EZ as a joint venture project based on the G2G provisions of the Bangladesh Economic Zones Act 2010 in cooperation with JICA.
The goal of the project is to expand the facilities of diversifying industries to produce various commodities, to create friendly environment for attracting Japanese and local investment and to reduce poverty and improve standard of life by generating employment for sustainable economic development. BEZA expressed its hope that the zone will attract US$20 billion worth foreign investments, most of which will be from Japan. BEZA envisages that this investment will play an important role in creating employment and also in transferring technologies to this country. The zone will consist of appropriate recycling plant to remove industrial wastes.
BEZA expect that industries from the agro-food, light engineering, chemical, automobile assembly, garments and pharmaceutical sectors will be set up in the EZ. The economic zone is likely to create around 100,000 employments.