MOVE TO DIVEST SOE LANDS
1,288 acres in Dhaka, Ctg up for grabs
The Privatisation Commission has identified 1,288 acres of ‘unutilised and additional lands’ under 39 state-owned enterprises as part of the government’s plan to lease them out to private investors, officials said.
It has identified the lands after a survey of the SoEs located mainly in Dhaka and Chittagong.
Nine closed industries under the Bangladesh Chemical Industries Corporation, three closed units of the Bangladesh Steel and Engineering Corporation and 10 sugar mills of the Bangladesh Sugar and Food Industries Corporation were included in the survey.
The report of the survey was placed at a meeting of a high-powered committee led by the prime minister’s economic adviser, Mashiur Rahman, early this month.
The government formed the committee to privatise unutilised and additional land of the SoEs ahead of the next general election in a bid to augment private investment in the country where availability of land at suitable places is scare and their prices are higher.
The PC chairman, Mirza Abdul Jalil, also a member of the committee, told New Age on Saturday that around 250 new industrial units could be set up on the lands which remained unutilised for long.
He pointed out that the advantage of the lands was that they were completely prepared with electricity, gas and water connections.
The PC chairman hoped that the government might be able to divest the SoE lands in its current tenure enabling the country to attract the much needed local and foreign investments.
Another survey conducted recently by the same organisation on the already privatised SoEs, revealed that almost half of 75 divested SoEs remained inoperative.
The private investors have been ignoring the main condition of privatisation – continue operation.
Successive governments have privatised the SoEs since 1993 on the pretext that they were incurring losses.
Economist Anu Muhammad said the county had bitter experience of privatisation of the SoEs in line with the recommendations of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
‘Private operators were even found turning state-owned mills into real estates,’ he said.
Anu Muhammad said the latest plan by the government to divest the SoE lands was nothing but to offer chances for encroachers to grab public lands.
The committee members should be called facilitators of public land grabbers, he added.
PC member Golam Quddus is working as the member-secretary of the committee which also includes Board of Investment executive chairman SA Samad, principal secretary to the prime minister, Bangladesh Bank governor and secretaries to the ministries of finance, jute and textiles, commerce and industries.
Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industries director ASM Mohiuddin Monem is the lone member of the committee picked up from the private sector.
The committee, which has been asked to hand over the identified unused lands to the Privatisation Commission, has been empowered even to declare an entire land of a state-owned entity surplus if it so considers.
Courtesy of New Age
