From Protest to Powerhouse: Rethinking Bangladesh’s Future Through the Eyes of BIDA’s Chairman

April 2025 | ⏳ Calculating reading time... | BanglaMindscape.com

How a personal story, youth-led movements, and bold policy thinking are shaping a new national mindset.

In the BIDA Chairman Speech Bangladesh 2025, delivered at the Investment Summit, Ashik Chowdhury painted a bold and emotional picture of a nation in transformation. From the youth-led protests on August 5, 2024, to a regional vision for 2035, his words captured more than policy—they reflected a shift in mindset that defines Bangladesh’s next chapter.

📸 A Moment That Changed the Narrative

On August 5, 2024, a spontaneous uprising swept across the streets of Dhaka. Youth from every corner of the city took to the streets—not with violence, but with purpose. Their demands were simple yet powerful: transparency, opportunity, democracy, and freedom of speech.

🚀 Projecting Bangladesh into 2035

From the moment of protest, Chairman Ashik takes us on a visionary leap: imagining a Bangladesh in 2035, not just as a rising economy but as a regional manufacturing powerhouse. This is not a distant fantasy, but a roadmap being drawn today—one that redefines Bangladesh’s role in the global economy.

He spoke of a future where Bangladesh acts as a bridge between the Himalayas and the Bay of Bengal, a global hub where international and local investors collaborate, export, and grow.

🌏 A Shift in Mindset: From 180 Million to Regional Influence

Traditionally, we’ve looked inward — a domestic market of 180 million people. But this speech calls for a mental reset. “Why limit ourselves?” he asks. Bangladesh isn’t just a market — it can be a launchpad for regional exports and global influence.

📣 Turning Critics Into Ambassadors

The leadership didn’t stop at big ideas. They held direct conversations with over 200 CEOs and entrepreneurs doing business in Bangladesh. Their aim? To identify pain points and remove them — not just with promises but with practical, human-first solutions like:

• Real one-stop investor services (both human and digital)
• Green channel fast-tracking for exporters
• Relationship managers to guide investors like banks do

🏁 A Call to Join the Journey

Chairman Ashik Chowdhury didn’t end with Excel sheets or charts. He ended with a feeling — the warmth and resilience of the Bangladeshi people. The real pitch wasn’t economic. It was transformational.

📜 Full Speech of BIDA Chairman Ashik Chowdhury – Bangladesh Investment Summit 2025

Below is the complete transcript of the keynote speech delivered by the Executive Chairman of BIDA during the Investment Summit 2025 in Dhaka.

"Hello, hello. Yes. Sorry, that was actually intentional. We did it to just warm you guys up. So, good morning, everyone. Let's completely look at it one more time. Good morning, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for everyone for coming from such long distance and we apologize for ones that we could not manage to give accommodation. We had exceptional level of interest for the summit, which is which is really, which is really great to see for us. My first slide is a thank you slide, that's not the last slide. We just wanted to thank all of you for finally coming and joining the Summit. So, the purpose of the Summit is today, sitting in this forum, we would like to say that we are open for business, and we're really committed to win business from all of you. And to do that, we have already thrown Lutfey Siddiqi at you — not literally, but verbally. We'll also throw a Nobel Prize winner at you. We'll do anything to make sure that we win business from you. But first, I would like to take you to future. Let's think about a movie, 'Back to the Future'. Let's go into that set and imagine that we are in 2035. In 2035, how would Bangladesh look like? You'll all be here again. My successor is going to be here presenting with the 10th Investment Conference for us. And in that conference, we will not be talking about a rising economy, but we'll be talking about a regional manufacturing powerhouse. A country that's connecting east to the west, a bridge that connects Himalayas to Bay of Bengal, a manufacturing hub that is infested by global investors and local investors who are now exporting to the rest of the world. That vision, that imagination is what's driving us today. But it all started actually about eight months ago. So, in the future, let's go back in time. From August 5, 2024. It's a personal story for almost all of us. Unfortunately, I was in Singapore in an investment banking trading room, but my family was here. My wife was on summer holidays. My brother, who came from Cambridge for summer holidays as well — they were all out on the street, part of the protest. So at around noon, Singapore time, I asked them what's going on, what's happening in Dhaka. So what they did was they were part of a crowd, they looked forward, they took a selfie — sorry, not a selfie, a photo of what's ahead of them — they turned around back and took another photo of what was behind them. So this first photo was what was ahead of them. And this one was behind them. So we need to digest exactly what happened at that time. The young population, the entire youth was out on the street demanding transparency, demanding opportunity, demanding democracy, demanding freedom of speech. And that's what has brought us here today. So, today, the expectations are very high. The young population of our country — they're global. Unlike us, they're used to tweeting, they're used to looking at TikTok and looking at Singapore and Bangkok, so they don't want Dhaka to be Dhaka 2.0. They actually want Dhaka to become Singapore and Bangkok in 5–10 years' time. So how do we get there? That's the expectation we have. How do we get to Singapore and Bangkok within 5–10 years? How do we unlock the energy that we got during the August revolution? How do we harness that energy and convert it into employment generation and industrialization? The story for Bangladesh was always there. A lot of you already know about this — we have 180 million domestic market, we have a young population, almost half of it is less than 25 years old, the middle and affluent class is about 35 million people, which is as big as the Malaysian total population. We have many, many other factors that have led to where we are today. And actually, I must say that there are companies that have been here for more than 100 years and have made exceptional returns from capturing the global market. If you look at some of these companies that have actually operated in Bangladesh for a long, long time — the returns they have got in Bangladesh is actually significantly higher than the global average. And today, we also have a fantastic news that one of our own startups, called ShopUp — the news came out about an hour ago in Bloomberg — that the Saudi sovereign PIF, their investment arm called Sanabil Investment, they have actually co-led around $110 million along with Peter Thiel, Valar Ventures, to invest in one of our own startups to go global. So let's give a big round of applause to ShopUp. So that's today. So what's tomorrow? How do we go from here to the vision we have for 2035? So this 180 million people story is not enough. I think we need to redefine market. We believe the market is actually much larger. When we talk about market, we should be talking about a much larger regional market, which you could potentially serve out of Bangladesh. You set up a factory here, you export out to all these markets. At the same time, I would expect these markets to set up their factories and push it back to Bangladesh, use the ports of Bangladesh and potentially export out to the rest of the world. So, the narrative that we have — why invest in Bangladesh — is not really a domestic market 180 million story, it is a regional story and a global story. To further strengthen ourselves, we have decided to enhance our port capacity. In Chittagong area, what you see now — we are actually tripling that within the next few years, which will essentially allow this region to consider Bangladesh as one of the biggest logistical hubs. However, that's not all. We need to do a lot more. So, at the beginning of the interim government period, we actually decided to talk to more than 200 CEOs and entrepreneurs who are actually doing business in Bangladesh today. And we wanted to understand — how can we convert our critics into our ambassadors? They are the only ones who could potentially bring business for us. They are the only ones who, if they travel abroad and say, "Bangladesh is a great place for business," that's when we are likely to get more investment. So we divided all their complaints into two groups for the solutions that came out of their complaints. The list of challenges is very long — it's from the earth to the moon and back. But we whittled it down to a few action items, some of which are short-term wins, some of which are actually long-term policy reforms that we would also like to undertake and set the direction of travel for the country in the right course so that the incoming government — the next government, the political parties — come and start driving this economy, they can follow the same script for us. I'll give you a few examples. Let's start with — we talked about a true one-stop service. There are two elements of one-stop service. The first one is the human element, and then there is the digital element. In the human element piece, what we have decided to do is: we are going to co-locate the primary agencies — the high-touchpoint agencies — for our investors in one location so that instead of the investors walking around different ministries (and we have a lot of them in Bangladesh), they all come to one office and they end up meeting everyone. We've also decided, like banks — and I am from banking, I guess that helped — that we are going to set up a relationship management team under BIDA. What it would essentially do is just like a corporate relationship banking manager — he would hold hands of the investor and walk them around the landing process. Let's take another example. Our friends in National Board of Revenue helped us set up the Authorized Economic Operator (AEO), essentially the green channel — widely known as the green channel setup — where if you're a good customer, you are able to circumvent some of the customs checks and fast-track your process through the port. That has been picked up as one of the biggest challenges that we have — the time it takes to go from your factory all the way to your customer. And finally, let me show you one more example of policy change. So, as you all know, there are many government agencies. We all do know there is private sector. The dialogue between private sector and government agencies has not necessarily always been the most collegial. So how do we break that apart? The first thing we need to do is to club the government agency into one. We need to show one face. We need to be one outfit for our customers, our investors — and then create a bridge between our private sector and the Government of Bangladesh. So what we are planning to do is to set up a private sector advisory council that will actually counsel the head of state directly on a regular basis — essentially voicing the changes that they would want to drive the economy forward. So, these are some of the examples of what we are planning to do, and if we are able to do that, we do believe that we will get to the end of the vision we had for 2035. Now, of course, there are many, many other factual reasons, statistics, tables, Excel files that I can share with you to tell you why you should invest in Bangladesh. In fact, the next slide will have a QR code, which you can scan and download, which will have essentially this presentation. You didn't have to take the photo for the presentation, by the way. You will have this presentation, and you will also have an appendix of facts and figures on why we think competitively we're actually in a very better place than our competitors. So please watch out for the QR code. But before I go there, I'd really like to finish off with this. There are economic reasons to invest in Bangladesh, but I really don't want you to invest in Bangladesh for the economic reasons. If you really think about investing in Bangladesh, think about investing in Bangladesh because of the transformational journey you're going to be part of. For the odd mixture of warmth and resilience our people have, and our century-old culture paired with the shared values that we have with you. So I rest my case here. Thank you very much for coming and enjoy the rest of the day. Thank you all."