The Investment Development Authority is likely to start functioning from March as the proposed related law will go to parliament in a week, Finance Division officials said. They said Finance Division would seek Presidential approval before placing the law to the Parliament which is supposed to be in session from tomorrow. The proposed authority is an amalgamation of Board of Investment and Privatisation Commission. Investment Development Authority is a slightly changed name of previously proposed Bangladesh Development Authority. The new body is expected to help to increase local and foreign investments. Officials said the proposed body would register all private industrial units and offices of all foreign commercial organisations. However, entities such as the BEPZA, EPZ, economic zones, private EPZ, BSCIC industrial town, the Hi-Tech Park Authority and investments made by the ministries would be outside the jurisdiction of the new body. The Board of Investment was formed in 1989, and the Privatisation Board in 1993, which was later transformed into the Privatisation Commission in 2000. The Privatisation Commission’s job was to sell loss-making state units. Chairman of Investment Development Authority will be Prime Minister and Vice-Chairman will be Finance Minister. Besides, an executive director will run that authority. Investment Development Authority will be business-friendly, according to the proposal. Finance ministry sources said the Privatisation Commission had not efficiently worked in last 15 years and only 58 government-owned enterprises were privatised. They said the shares of 23 state-owned firms were off-loaded and in last four years only one state-run firm was privatised. On August 31 last year, the cabinet approved the draft of the Bangladesh Investment Development Authority Act 2015 that will merge the Board of Investment with the Privatisation Commission. Meanwhile, Finance Minister AMA Muhith in Parliament earlier denied the claim that the investment in the country had declined and the liquidity crisis increased in the banking sector. He claimed the investment was increasing gradually. As of June 2015, the investment in both public and private sectors rose to Tk434,440 crore (29% of GDP) from Tk251,130 crore (27.4% of GDP), he said. According to Bangladesh Bank data, the private sector credit growth was 13.7% in November last year while Monetary Policy Projection was 14.8%.
