DHAKA, Sept 20: The Government of Bangladesh decided on Thursday to constitute a high-powered task force comprising heads of all utility agencies and relevant ministries to ensure that foreign investors are given smooth and expeditious service.

The executive chairman of the Board of Investment (BoI), Mahmudur Rahman, has been made convener of the task force.

A high-level meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) also resolved that letters would be sent to all embassies, funding agencies and potential investors, refuting allegations of impediments to doing business in Bangladesh, according to sources inside.

The BoI has been assigned the task to prepare the letters in consultation with other agencies and dispatch them to all relevant persons.

The meeting was convened in the wake of recent Japanese allegations that the Bangladeshi officials concerned hardly cooperate the foreign investors without bribes. The letter of allegations, officially submitted to the government last month by the Japanese Ambassador in Dhaka, and distributed among some lending agencies, created a lot of controversy on the country’s investment climate, and the PMO summoned top officials of the ministries and agencies including the BoI, T&T, National Board of Revenue, Bangladesh Bank, ministries of home, planning, industries and others.

However, the meeting at PMO was said to have observed that the allegations — especially those made recently by the Japanese embassy in Dhaka — about Bangladesh’s investment climate were only partially “true”. “Some were exaggerations and some were misperceptions, even though we’ve problems,” an official was said to have observed at the meeting.

Chaired by Principal Secretary to the PMO, Dr. Kamal Uddin Siddiqui, on behalf of the Prime Minister, the meeting took into cognizance the allegations put forward by the Japanese Ambassador in Dhaka, Matsushiro Horiguchi.

In a bid to address the problems faced by any foreign investor, the task force will be formed so that foreign investors need not go through any hazardous or time-wasting process.