Dhaka: The Cabinet on Monday gave the final approval to the draft of the Bangladesh Economic Zones (Amendment) Bill, 2015 aiming to incorporate the provision of establishing Economic Zones in Bangladesh by foreign countries under Government-to-Government (G-to-G) basis.

The approval was given at the regular weekly meeting of the Cabinet held at Bangladesh Secretariat with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the chair.

Briefing reporters after the meeting, Cabinet secretary M Musharraf Hossain Bhuiyan said the proposed amendment also relaxed the provision of establishing Economic Zones outside city corporation, municipality and cantonment board areas for only IT and ICT related industries.

He said a processing committee would also be formed under the amended law to establish Economic Zones on G-to-G basis to prepare necessary modalities for the purpose.

Musharraf Hossain said the existing Bangladesh Economic Zones Act, 2010 has the provisions for setting up four types of economic zones in the country namely government economic zones, private economic zones, economic zones under PPP initiatives and specialized economic zones.

But, now countries like China, Japan and India have shown their interests to set up economic zones in Bangladesh on G-to-G basis following the successful visits of the Prime Minister.

Under the circumstances, the Cabinet Secretary said, such an enabling provision has been incorporated in the proposed amendment so that the interested foreign countries could set up economic zones in Bangladesh in partnership with the government.

The Cabinet meeting also approved the draft of the ‘National Social Security Strategy of Bangladesh’ with some observations making provisions for bringing the vulnerable group people under Social Safety Network for their whole life.

The cabinet secretary said the draft of this strategy was earlier placed before the cabinet meeting on 6 April 2015 where the Cabinet gave some observations. After reflecting those, the GED of the Planning Commission again placed the draft strategy today for approval.

He said the government now spends around 2.3% of GDP annually in various social safety net programmes as some 145 different social safety net programes in association of 23 ministries and divisions are being implemented.

He said ensuring proper coordination among the huge number of programmes is a big challenge where existence of a strategy paper is very important which would act as a guiding document. The paper would also give special attention to the physically-challenged and disabled people.

Ministers and state ministers attended the meeting. Secretaries concerned were also present.