Good afternoon everyone, as the last spokesman, I am really under a big pressure.
Today, our topic is that why we choose to transfer the industries into Bangladesh? Actually, the spokesmen before me have made full explanations of the answers to this question. I can only to make the demonstration according to my personal experience. I was an investment banker in the United States before, and I am also as an entrepreneur in Bangladesh. So I will make statements on the question from this perspective.
First of all, I am going to talk about challenges and opportunities. Challenge is not a problem, sometimes emerging together with opportunity. The first challenge should be that the China’s GDP growth is weakening, because over the past thirty years China’s economic growth has continued increasing by two digits, and now it may have been overheated. So it cannot be cannot be considered as a bad thing to slowdown. The support of economy in China has gradually shifted from the previous state-owned enterprises to the private sector, and due to the improvement of people’s living standards, now, the housing cost is also rising.
In the past, China’s economic growth was driven by exporting; now with the increasing of the purchasing power, the tendency has shifted slowly. At present, 30 percent of China’s exporting goods are high-tech products, for the Chinese entrepreneurs, what the most important is to turn the “Made in China “into “Designed in China”. We take mobile phone as an example. The design of the phone is in the United States, and its production is in China. Actually design is a high value-added work. Now China is hoping to turn the manufacture into design, adding the technical content of products and improving its added value. Bangladesh hopes China can make it, so does China.
So there is a banker’s theory, that is, RMB is appreciating, and it is best to go abroad to invest and produce.
After we had a look at the challenges and opportunities in China, we will, let us discuss the challenges and opportunities in Bangladesh, and see what kind of complementarity between the two countries. As I have mentioned, in my previous statement, that the average economic growth rate of Bangladesh has reached 6 percent over the past 10 years. Just as the same as what China had experienced before, now the economic support of Bangladesh is largely transferring from the state-owned enterprises to the private sector. As I mentioned before, there is 90 million strong workforces in Bangladesh, and another important factor is that there is a stable local currency.
The government of Bangladesh also lays great stress on attracting foreign direct investment. And it gives complete supports the measures above. ODI stands for the overseas direct investment. As a country to invest, there are three very important factors: NO.1, the price of labor, NO.2, the exchange rate. NO.3, the mechanism. In Bangladesh, the labor cost is cheap and only 1/5 to 1/10 of that in China, about mechanism, to invest in foreign country needs the supports from policies and mechanisms. And in Bangladesh, the investment environment is very sound.
Why the country to invest still needs to pay attention on the exchange rate? Because if the local currency is not stable, with repeated ups and down, that will have a great influence on the investment.
Bangladesh has gradually entered into the stage of manufacturing from a complete agricultural country. And the model of investment is gradually transiting from the government’s single investment to the joint one from the government, public sector and private sector. Bangladesh has also established a number of special economic zones, which is also a strategic program.
I would like to mention that, in 2012, Bangladesh established high-tech industrial park. Due to its establishment, this will vigorously promote the rise of the high-tech industry in Bangladesh. Besides, Bangladesh also set up a software technology training center.
Now, I sum up what I have talked about just now. First, Bangladesh has an important strategic geographic location; second, the structure of population in Bangladesh is reasonable, including a number of young people; third, there are
strong supports from government and a sound investment environment. And another most important factor is that the lowest labor cost, but the technical content in labor is very high.
Now, I want to say a few Chinese to the Chinese friends in Chinese : “I love China”.