Say businesses at a roundtable
Businesses on Saturday said lack of cooperation and trust between the public and private sectors was the key challenge for implementation of the public private partnership programme in the country. At a roundtable discussion on the PPP in Bangladesh, business leaders urged the government to create more business-friendly environment and to ensure grater coordination among the organisations responsible for PPP project implementation.
‘Entrepreneurs do not know the details of PPP projects as there is a lack of coordination and trust between the public and private sectors,’ said Abdus Salam, director of the Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Senior secretary to the Prime Minister’s Office Md Abul Kalam Azad said, ‘It is a fact that there is a lack of cooperation and trust between the public and private sectors and the problem would be removed through discussion.’
‘To make PPP successful, we have to improve in the area,’ he said.
PPP Office under the PMO, DCCI and Business Initiative Leading Development jointly organised the programme at the DCCI auditorium in the city.
At the programme, businesspeople also demanded uninterrupted power and gas supply to the PPP projects.
‘If Bangladesh fails to develop infrastructure in a quick pace, it will fall behind other competitive countries,’ said Asif Ibrahim, chairman of BUILD.
For the interest of investment and to provide jobs to three million people who join the labour market every year the PPP can play an important role, Asif said.
He said in Bangladesh PPP had contributed a lot in the sector of infrastructure, health, energy, social services and it was also attracting foreign investment.
‘To accelerate the progress of economic development of the country, infrastructure is required to be developed rapidly and PPP project can be an alternative option to ensure expensive infrastructure development through the involvement of the private sector,’ DCCI president Mohammad Shahjahan Khan said.
He stressed on finalisation of the PPP law within a shortest possible time and sought more active PPP initiatives in building sea ports, railway development, waste management and tourism
sector.
Md Abul Kalam Azad said that PPP initiatives had created a momentum to the infrastructure development activities of the country.
He said the PPP projects were taken in a transparent way under the direct supervision of the PMO and the initiative could play a vital role in future projects because some other earlier projects including Dhaka-Chittagong four-lane project, Joydebpur-Mymensing four-lane project and different projects in the energy sector became successful.
He informed that the work of establishing LNG (liquid natural gas) terminal would be completed by the end of 2015 and government would be able to deliver LNG from that terminal.
At the same time PPP projects would get enough power supply, he said.
Syed Afsor H Uddin, chief executive officer of the PPP office, presented the keynote paper.
He highlighted that the main focus of the PPP was to open up investment opportunities and to deliver public services through the private sector.
DCCI directors Humayun Rashid and Md Nurul Haque, former director Waqar Ahmad Choudhury, Bangladesh Infrastructure Finance Fund Limited executive director Md Atiquzzaman, Board of Investment member Navash Chandra Mandal, Abdul Monem Ltd managing director Mainuddin Monem and Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry adviser Manjur Ahmed took part in the open discussion session.
-With New Age input
