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WATER:
Water is supplied by the
Water and Sewerage Authority
(WASA) in the metropolitan
areas. Very high priority is
attached regarding
availability of water in
industrial areas.
GAS:
Natural
gas supply is available in
major industrial areas.
TELECOMMUNICATION:
Comprehensive
telecommunication services
such as fully automatic
telex, fax, e-mail,
internet, telephone
including international
direct dialing are
available.
ELECTRICITY:
In
Bangladesh
, electric power is
generated in hydro, steam,
gas-turbine, and diesel
power plants. All the
generating stations are
interconnected through a
national grid.
INDUSTRIAL
LAND
:
Once
an industrial project is
registered, the entrepreneur
is eligible to apply for
allotment of land to the
government. Price of land in
most of the industrial
estates/ areas is relatively
lower than the market rate.
These estates are developed
with necessary
infrastructure facilities
such as electricity, gas,
water, sewerage, etc.
Industrial
plots are allotted by
Bangladesh Export Processing
Zones Authority (BEPZA) and
Bangladesh Small and Cottage
Industries Corporation (BSCIC)
in industrial areas
developed by them. Plots in
other industrial
estates/areas, owned by the
government or
owned/controlled by any
local authority, are
allotted on the
recommendation of the Board
of Investment (BOI).
Ready-made
Garments
The ready-made garment
industry in
Bangladesh
is not the outgrowth of
traditional economic
activities but emerged from
economic opportunities
perceived by the private
sector in the late 1970s.
Frustrated by quotas imposed
by importing nations, such
as the
United States
, entrepreneurs and managers
from other Asian countries
set up factories in
Bangladesh
, benefiting from even lower
labor costs than in their
home countries, which offset
the additional costs of
importing all materials to
Bangladesh
. Bangladesh-origin products
met quality standards of
customers in North America
and
Western Europe
, and prices were
satisfactory. Business
flourished right from the
start; many owners made back
their entire capital
investment within a year or
two and thereafter continued
to realize great profits.
Some 85 percent of
Bangladeshi production was
sold to North American
customers, and virtually
overnight
Bangladesh
became become the sixth
largest supplier to the
North American market.
After
foreign businesses began
building a ready-made
garment industry,
Bangladeshi capitalists
appeared, and a veritable
rush of them began to
organize companies in Dhaka,
Chittagong, and smaller
towns, where basic
garments--men's and boys'
cotton shirts, women's and
girls' blouses, shorts, and
baby clothes--were cut and
assembled, packed, and
shipped to customers
overseas (mostly in the
United States). With
virtually no government
regulation, the number of
firms proliferated; no
definitive count was
available, but there were
probably more than 400 firms
by 1985, when the boom was
peaking.
After
just a few years, the
ready-made garment industry
employed more than 200,000
people. According to some
estimates, about 80 percent
were women, never previously
in the industrial work
force. Many of them were
woefully underpaid and
worked under harsh
conditions. The net benefit
to the Bangladeshi economy
was only a fraction of
export receipts, since
virtually all materials used
in garment manufacture were
imported; practically all
the value added in
Bangladesh
was from labor.
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