Business Desk:
The Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA) has officially activated its Outward Remittance Repatriation Approval service through the BIDA One Stop Service (OSS) online portal, providing full digital processing for approvals related to royalty, technical know-how, technical assistance, and franchise fees.
The service, which had previously existed only in offline form due to technical limitations, can now be accessed digitally offering investors faster, more transparent processing with application tracking and a time-bound delivery within 7 working days, as per the service level agreement (SLA).
“We’ve closed yet another gap. Investors can now submit applications online, track their progress, pay fees digitally and receive approvals through a fully electronic and environment-friendly workflow bringing efficiency and accountability to an essential process for local and foreign industries operating in Bangladesh,” said Ashik Chowdhury, Executive Chairman of BIDA.
He added that the government has also launched BanglaBiz, a unified digital portal developed by BIDA in partnership with JICA. Currently, it connects the one-stop service portals of BIDA and other investment promotion agencies under one roof. Once 25+ services are directly integrated into BanglaBiz at the end of this month, investors will find processes even faster and simpler.
BIDA’s OSS now hosts 142 investor services in total. This latest addition strengthens the agency’s commitment to ease of doing business and investor facilitation under the legal framework of the BIDA Act (2016), the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (1947, amended in 2015), and Bangladesh Bank’s 2018 Foreign Exchange Guidelines.
The Research and Analytics Unit (RAU), under UNDP’s Transformative Economic Policy Programme (TEPP-II) project funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, provided technical assistance and facilitated coordination to advance the digitisation of this process.
