This drew the end to the basic hurdle for the South Korean Youngone group to start inviting investors at the country's biggest private export processing zone located on 2500 acres of land by the Karnaphuli river in Chittagong.

But before the KEPZ can physically start investing, the government will have to issue a gazette notification and statutory regulatory order to allow investment materials to enter Bangladesh under the KEPZ framework, sources said.

By size and investment profile, the KEPZ stands out from all other EPZs in the country as it plans to install 500 industrial units with an investment of $1 billion and directly employ about 1,00,000 people.

Sources said the KEPZ plans to set up the whole range of garment and textile units besides units for electronics, software, scientific and optical tools, machine tools, automotive parts and others. To set up its infrastructure, Youngone will separately invest $200 million.

The KEPZ is expected to start exports within two years of getting the licence.

Youngone invested about Tk 100 crore between 1999 and 2003 to procure the 2,500 acres of land and develop it under the private EPZ law. But it could not open the zone as the BNP-led alliance government declined to give it operating licence without any explicit reason.

After dilly-dallying for five years, Khaleda Zia's government however decided in September last year to award Youngone the licence but imposed some terms and conditions that contradicted the government's original promises to the foreign investor.

The caretaker government last month reviewed the September decision and revised the approval in accordance with the private EPZ law.