While we prided ourselves on offers of foreign investment being registered with the Bangladesh Board of Investment (BoI) and liked to showcase them as our turning into an investment destination, hardly any tangible results have accrued from them. The investment proposals of Indian conglomerate Tata, Abu Dhabi Group, UK-based Global Oil and Energy Ltd, Malaysian Azimat Corporation Ltd and Contech Ltd. are cases in point.

Let's not forget that other countries are in a race with us to attract FDIs so that inordinate delay in entertaining proposals could make potential investors move to other economies. On the other hand, if big investors should put money upfront in Bangladesh as sign of confidence in us it would only encourage further investment in the country.

True, we cannot take investment offers on their face value, a whole set of national and economic interest considerations, both medium and long term, would need to be taken into account. But we cannot be indefinitely indecisive about the proposals, leaving the investors in a state of uncertainty.

We do not have any firm and clearly laid out policy framework to evaluate mega project proposals and decide on them one way or the other. This was topped off by political indecision and lack of vision. In actual fact, the absence of policy guidelines translated into greater bureaucratic red tape.

The proposals would be sent to ministries concerned so that there has been inter-ministerial detour of the files. Our suggestion is the much-vaunted one-stop service be introduced immediately to process the investment proposals and a high powered taskforce put in place to accord approvals.