Business Desk :
Sumitomo Corporation has developed industrial parks in nine locations in six countries (as of October 2024), mainly in Southeast and South Asia including Bangladesh.
The company is proud to be the leading Japanese industrial park developer in the region. Together with local governments and partners, we have expropriated vast tracts of land covering several hundred hectares and developed infrastructure.
From attracting tenant companies to supporting their operations, we are contributing to the development of manufacturing in each of these regions.
Chiharu Tagawa, Manager of the Industrial Park Unit, which was responsible for promoting the Bangladesh Special Economic Zone (BSEZ) project, Sumitomo Corporation’s sixth development site in Bangladesh stated media about his thoughts on the project.
Chiharu joined Sumitomo Corporation in 2008 as a new graduate. He was transferred to Bangladesh in 2018, where he took charge of new business development, including the BSEZ, before assuming his current position in 2022, where he also leads the development of strategies for the industrial park business as a whole.
Chiharu said about his involvement in the Bangladesh Special Economic Zone (BSEZ) project.
He said, “I was given the go-ahead to explore new business opportunities in Bangladesh in June 2016. I have now been involved in this project for more than eight years in various capacities, and BSEZ has become a key project that is tantamount to my personal mission for my thirties.
About Bangladesh’s greatest potentials, he said, “Bangladesh borders India to the north, east and west, and Myanmar to the southeast, making it a geographic hub connecting South and Southeast Asia.
With a population approximately 1.4 times that of Japan (the eighth largest in the world at approximately 170 million), the country is rich in human resources, with a working population that continues to grow steadily. In addition, the economy has shown remarkable development in recent years, and domestic demand is expected to continue surging. Against this backdrop, we felt that the country had tremendous potential as a manufacturing base.”
When I undertook my study of the country, many parts of Bangladesh lacked basic infrastructure such as electricity, water and telecommunications, not to mention other systems necessary for doing business.
Improving the investment environment would serve to promote direct investment from overseas and help Bangladesh realize its potential as a manufacturing base. We reasoned that we could contribute to the country’s economic development by leveraging Sumitomo Corporation’s expertise and experience in industrial park projects, he added.
In Bangladesh, infrastructure development using Official Development Assistance (ODA) is progressing at a rapid pace, and there is a strong cooperative relationship between Japan and Bangladesh, principally in the form of yen loans. With this idea in mind, we were able to launch Sumitomo Corporation’s first subsidiary company in Bangladesh.
He stated that the BSEZ development company was established in 2019.
During this period, we worked intensively with the Government of Bangladesh to lay the groundwork necessary to get the project off the ground.