STAR BUSINESS REPORT

Bangladesh’s industrial and job growth has increasingly concentrated around Dhaka and Chattogram and, more recently, in the Rangpur city corporation area, forming a trident-shaped growth corridor, said a new World Bank (WB) study.

“This polarisation trend is also evident in nighttime lights (NTL) satellite imagery,” said the WB in a special focus on a new urbanisation pathway to boost job growth in Bangladesh in its Bangladesh Development Update released on Tuesday.

NTL value is highest and grows fastest in the Dhaka metropolitan region and Chattogram region. More broadly, stronger NTL growth has occurred in the major regional cities with a population of more than 200,000, as well as the neighbouring highway areas linking these cities, it added.

The WB report said that over the past two decades, Bangladesh has undergone significant shifts in the geography of employment, population growth, and infrastructure development, driven largely by the rapid expansion of its manufacturing sector, particularly the garment and textile industry.

Such dynamism has been shaped mainly through “bottom-up” market forces, most of which have taken place in the absence of appropriate planning, sufficient infrastructure, and basic service support.

“This somewhat chaotic and unregulated development and industrialisation process, at least at the earlier stage, has contributed to the overall growth story of Bangladesh as market demand was able to be accommodated quickly and responsively,” it said.

However, rapid expansion in the Dhaka-Chattogram corridor has created congestion pressures. As such, industrial development has continuously suburbanised to the “periphery areas” of key growth engines, administratively classified as rural areas, with even less infrastructure and planning support than the urban centres, it added.

The WB said industries have grown faster when located in areas with access to major urban labour markets and the Chattogram port for imports and exports.

The fastest job growth has occurred along the Dhaka-Chattogram corridor, which hosts most large, high-productivity manufacturing jobs, particularly in garments and textiles.

Recently, this growth has extended south toward Cox’s Bazar and north toward Sylhet, Mymensingh, and Rangpur, forming a trident-shaped growth pattern, though on a smaller scale, it added.

The WB report said several municipalities within and beyond the main growth corridor, such as Madhabdi-Narsingdi, Brahmanbaria, and Noakhali, have gained importance due to their strategic locations.

Narsingdi and Madhabdi, situated east of Dhaka near the Meghna River, have attracted many textile industries in the past decade, including foreign investments.