The World Marketing Summit (WMS) yesterday adopted a ten-point declaration with focus on a year-long research into health, education, environment and food security.
The Dhaka Declaration was adopted at the closing session of the three-day summit in Bangabandhu International Conference Centre in Dhaka.
“We will establish two incubators in Bangladesh targeting the health and education sectors,” said Syed Ferhat Anwar, chairman of WMS, while reading the declaration.
He said the health incubator will focus on micro health insurance, targeting the garment workers in the country, which will compliment their earnings.
The education incubator will focus on creating employment for high school dropouts through skills development in IT enable services education, said Anwar, who is also a marketing professor at Institute of Business Administration.
The two incubators will be coordinated by the Kotler Centre for Marketing Excellence of the University of Dhaka, he added.
The summit is a global initiative of popular marketing guru Prof Philip Kotler in association with the foreign ministry of Bangladesh.
The event provided a platform for marketing and branding experts to discuss how marketing principles, tools and insights may be used to solve world problems.
About 60 business leaders, entrepreneurs and heads of corporate bodies from across the world participated in the summit.
In his speech, Kotler said many people outside Bangladesh were not too familiar about the country. “They (foreigners) started getting familiar with Bangladesh when its great citizen Prof Muhammad Yunus received the Nobel Peace Prize.”
He said the summit will help foreigners understand Bangladesh properly as it is the host country. The news will go in different international media, helping the country get international exposure, he added.
Kotler said Bangladesh should brand itself as a peaceful and happy nation to the world. “We have seen economic development in different styles, such as the Chinese or Indian style,” said Kotler.
He suggested the people of the country define the Bangladeshi way of economic development. “I think the best way to define the Bangladesh style would be ‘2Ps’ that is peace and prosperity,” he added.
Kotler said the nation should add a ‘growth domestic happiness’ index along with the ‘growth domestic product’ index to easure overall development in Bangladesh.
Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury, the energy adviser to the prime minister, said the public sector and private resources could be put together to solve the problems.
“When we deal with people, we must not forget they have a heart, head and soul,” he said.
Kamal Abdul Naser Chowdhury, education secretary, said an education incubator will certainly give immense opportunity to do better in the sector.
He said the country has already adopted a national education policy and national skill development policy to develop quality human resources, focusing on ICT education.
On the health incubator, Md Humayun Kabir, senior secretary for the health and family welfare ministry, said it will help the garment workers get access to health care service. He said there is a supply-side constraint as health sector financing is a challenging job.
According to the declaration, it will set up another four incubators in India, United Kingdom, Brazil and USA.
The declaration, however, did not explain areas that will cover the food security incubator in USA and an environment incubator in Brazil, saying the topics will be decided in due course.
It said the results of these incubators will be presented at the second summit in March next year.
-With The Daily Star input
