Bangladesh's Coming Out Party

Its 8.00 am on February 29, in fog-encased Dhaka – Asia’s latest boomtown - and a traffic snarl has built up from the centre of the city to a sprawling downtown conference hall named Bangabondhu International Conference Centre, after the founder of India’s eastern neighbour.

It's Bangladesh’s coming out party. As India’s economy slows down, its smaller neighbour, whose economy this year expanded to $100 billion, has decided to reach out to international investors by hosting American Marketing `Guru’ Philip Kotler’s World Marketing Summit, which promises to bring global marketers and managers to debate ways of "solving socio-economic problems" and to network with Bangladesh’s new crop of aggressive  businessmen.

Sheikh Hasina, who agreed to host the conclave and pay for it with her countrymen’s hard-earned foreign exchange, was clear that behind the lofty themes of the conference, it would “help us project strengths and capabilities of Bangladesh, the dynamism of the private sector … and the strong points of our economy and polity.”

Kotler who wrote his seminal theory on Social Marketing with Gerald Zaltman in the year Bangladesh was born after a bloody war of independence which saw 2 million citizens dead and the country’s economic assets all but destroyed by a retreating Pakistan army, hopes the conference will promote his theory of Marketing 3.0, which will bring `humane spirit' to business by creating a corporate culture of being “ecologically and socially responsible citizens”.

In some senses it's ironic that Bangladesh, whose economy is growing at a spanking 6.3 per cent, boosted by remittances and strong garment exports, should host an American `Guru’s” dream conference, just 41 years after another another American iconic `Guru' Henry Kissinger dismissed the newly born nation as “a basket case.”

But it is doing so and doing it at a time when it's turning into a new Asian economic `tiger’. Bangladesh is part of a list of 11 developing countries ranked by Goldman Sachs as having the best potential to emulate the success stories scripted by BRICS nations. Unemployment is at a low of 5 per cent and per capita income at over $700, though large swathes of poverty, double digit inflation and a tanking stock market are worries for the South Asian economy. Said Hasina :“If we can act … many of our callenges would be easy to address.”

Though Bangladesh’s challenges will take time to be solved, it still remains a success story. Garment exports are booming despite slowdown in Bangladesh’s major markets, boosting total exports to $ 24 billion. Software exports, a new business for the young nation grew by 30 per cent to $ 100 million last year. Entreprenuers are springing up in a nation accustomed to laid back traditions of punditry and safe bureaucratic jobs.

Asian Tigers Capital Partners, a fund management firm. says in a report that Bangladesh has turned into a highly attractive investment destination with a young demography of 150 million people, low capital costs coupled with high level of specific skill development, Large natural resources in gas and coal and a geographical location where it’s at the cross roads of India and China.

Said Altamash Kabir, whose family runs several tea gardens, a newspaper and a consultancy and engineering firm, “Bangladeshi business houses are open to tie-ups with Indian and other foreign partners in all fields. We have skill and labour cost strengths in the garment sector which have brought large numbers of Indian firms here … but those skills and costs could be used to set up joint venture light engineering firms whose market could not only be Bangladesh but also India.”

Bangladesh government wants to attract Indian , East Asian and western investment to expand its garments business, build a base for light engineering and develop infrastructure. The state wants to boost investment to 30 per cent of GDP, up from a current annual of 24 per cent and has set up a $700 million fund for building roads, ports and other infrastructure.

However, even as it dreams big, smaller problems nag. The much touted global conference opening saw many glitches. Excessive security for a prime minister who faced a coup attempt last December and a mutiny by border guards in the first few weeks of her rule, shut out delegate vehicles and threw out coffee machines from the venue. Several delegates suffered missing laptops, passports and wallets.  Kotler's aides were not exactly a happy lot at the end of the three-day conference and refused to commit to bringing the summit to Dhaka again next year as the country's foreign ministry demanded.

But then as one delegate pointed out, it was going out of its way to attract the world to Dhaka, whereas neighbouring Calcutta, a city with pretensions of being London had yet to get its act together in attracting and retaining fresh capital. In any case, the benefits from Kotler's jamboree may well be doubtful for a nation which needs to get the maximum bang for its dollar spending and an early exit by the `Guru's' clan may well be a blessing in disguise for Bangladesh.