Historically, Bangladesh followed a development strategy in which private investment was controlled through a host of regulations involving investment sanctioning, credit disbursement, import licensing, foreign exchange allocation, etc. While these regulatory barriers thwarted private investment in general, the impact fell unevenly on SMEs.
This was because of the relative inability of the SMEs to cope with the regulations compared to their large-scale counterparts. Thus, the policy regime was largely biased against the SMEs although, paradoxically, promoting SME development was a stated objective of successive governments. As mentioned above, small and medium entrepreneurs have always been somewhat neglected by the policy makers of this country. But their resilience to struggle and overcome all odds have created countless numbers to success stories. That is why we feel that our cover story on SME sector should show how this sector is neglected, both policy-wise and for other predicaments. Even after that, SME financing is on the upward trend, with several financial institutions and other key stakeholders pledging to help this industry flourish. Similarly, our interviewee for this month, Muklesur Rahman, MD and CEO at NRB Bank Ltd, had similar sentiments about our small and medium entrepreneurs.He expressed his desire to expand banking to the ‘unbanked,’ he stated in this issue’s interview of the month. Lives are also being changed by our telecom industry, who is trying hard to instill the uber-popular 3G connectivity to most of the regions of Bangladesh. As a harbinger of change, gone are the competition days of voice calls among the telecom service providers. Data service is the name of the game today, with too many services introduced by the telecom operators. But sadly, we are also lagging behind in connectivity issues. Pakistan had their 3G services launched after us, said a high official, but now they are vying for LTE connectivity, while our companies are fighting over 3G competitiveness. These are just some of the main articles of our April 2015 issue. As spring has been unleashed in its fullest potential, expect lots of humidity and dust in the coming months, but even that is better than the political heat, something that is still not sensing any conclusion in the coming days. We hope to see some respite from all this and experience the magic of the upcoming Pohela Boishakh and other festivities in the new year. Wishing our readers and patrons all a heartiest Shubho Noboborsho
