Md. Joynal Abdin

Challenges of Global Economic Integration

Economic integration is facing threat throughout the world. Brexit (2016) is the biggest blow to the European Union as well as to the global concept of economic integration. Endless calculation is going on to measure positive and negative impact of Brexit on British economy and rest of the world. On the other hand US President Donald Trump calls for 20% tax on Mexican imports to help pay for the border wall. Further such initiative of the new American President could lead the NAFTA agreement into inactive position. Similarly he has canceled the potentials of TPP agreement with an executive order. Sri Lanka and Nepal is going to reconsider their existing trade regime with India due to their protectionist feelings. Thus a global movement of protectionism could be weaved further and hit the multilateral system of economic integration and free market economy.

Concurrent Challenges Before Bangladesh Economy

Bangladesh economy was flourishing during last couple of decades with on an average 5-6 per cent growth. As a result, we are hopeful that, Bangladesh could get place of middle income country from existing lower middle income country status by 2021, graduate from LDC by 2030 and finally become a developed economy by 2041. With this view in mind our political leadership offered vision 2021, vision 2030 and vision 2041 from respective platforms. More or less policy reforms have been initiated to align with the vision and create a pro-growth environment. Entrepreneurship development and private sector growth got attention of the government to be promoted and prosper. As a least developed country (LDC) Bangladesh has few built-in barriers like poverty, unemployment, limited resources, shortage of technical knowhow, absence of good governance, corrupt bureaucracy, absence of true sense democracy etc. towards its development. But recently we are in front of few external barriers like recent flood in the northwest, Rohingya crisis in the southeast and upcoming national election in 2019. These three crises could be well managed if concerned authorities play a respective role with dedication and neutrality. Each of the above mentioned crisis could create unrecoverable damage in the way of our economic prosperity if these are not being managed with professionalism and liability to the nation.

Selecting Appropriate Approaches to Industrialization

Industries are playing a vital role in entrepreneurship development, self-employment, and new-employment opportunity creation and increasing economic growth throughout the world. Therefore governments are keen to promote industrialisation for fostering economic growth, fighting unemployment and reducing poverty. The government used to establish an organisation for promoting and developing industries. But due to lack of specialised knowledge to select an appropriate approach for industrialisation these organisations are becoming less productive or ineffective in this regard.