BIDA and ADB Launch Nationwide Industrial Survey to Map Investment and Regulatory Hurdles

Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA), in partnership with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (SANEM), has launched a nationwide industrial survey to map investment flows, industrial capacity, and the regulatory frictions facing businesses across the country, according to Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS). The exercise arrives at a structurally sensitive moment, as policymakers seek consolidated evidence ahead of Bangladesh's scheduled departure from the least developed country (LDC) framework and the corresponding erosion of trade preferences.

Survey architecture and data gap

Funded by ADB and supported technically by SANEM, the survey is structured around eight divisional workshops — the inaugural session held at Hotel Agrabad in Chattogram — designed to collect primary data directly from investors, chambers, and business associations. Its statutory purpose is to consolidate the fragmented investment information currently maintained across BIDA, the Bangladesh Economic Zones Authority (BEZA), the Bangladesh Export Processing Zones Authority (BEPZA), and Bangladesh Bank into a single, updatable database capable of feeding evidence-based industrial policy.

SANEM Programme Director Zubayer Hossen noted that preliminary mapping already reveals a pronounced geographical concentration of registered investment activity in Dhaka and Chattogram, with divisions including Rangpur remaining structurally underrepresented in official records — a data asymmetry that limits the precision of any regional industrial strategy. The survey is therefore positioned to give BIDA a recurring mechanism for investor profiling, compliance monitoring, and performance evaluation of its existing service portfolio.

From agrarian to industrial: the policy pivot

Speaking at the Chattogram workshop, BIDA Executive Member Md Humayun Kabir framed the survey as an instrument to identify area-specific investment potential and ensure that regional realities — rather than centrally aggregated assumptions — inform national policymaking. He argued that Bangladesh's transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy demands a cultural reorientation: one that privileges workforce skills over formal qualifications, expands the operational remit of the One Stop Service (OSS), and consolidates the diverse agencies and stakeholders under the government's Invest Bangladesh initiative into a coordinated delivery framework. Export diversification, policy continuity, and stronger academia-industry linkages were identified by Kabir as prerequisites for sustaining investment-led growth.

ADB Bangladesh Public Sector Economist Tasnim Alam situated the exercise within a narrower macroeconomic window. He indicated that the remaining preparatory period before LDC graduation makes a rigorous needs assessment imperative, and that incremental improvements to the ease of doing business — alongside institutional adoption of data analytics and artificial intelligence in investment administration — should now define the reform agenda.

What to track

The survey's first deliverable, a consolidated investor database, will test whether BIDA can move from episodic registration to continuous monitoring. The more consequential variable, however, is fiscal and regulatory: whether the evidence base translates into a coordinated service-delivery architecture across BIDA, BEZA, and BEPZA before the LDC transition fully takes effect. Foreign investors evaluating entry or expansion will need to watch for the publication of divisional findings later in the series, as these will signal which sectors and geographies the authorities intend to prioritise within the post-LDC incentive framework.