FROM PAGE B1

“Brahmanbaria has also experienced robust growth due to its important nodal location in connecting Sylhet with Chattogram, without having to pass through the Dhaka area.”

Along the Dhaka-Chattogram corridor, Noakhali has seen rapid population and job growth, reflecting spillover effects from the main highway.

The report cited the export processing zones (EPZs) and added that EPZs near Dhaka, Chattogram, and the corridor have become major employment hubs. The remote zones, such as Mongla in Bagerhat and Uttara in Nilphamari, have struggled to attract investors despite available land and incentives.

The WB study terms the industrialisation and job creation as an “east-west divide” and said the divide was considered to have caused “regional disparity and welfare gaps, which, although being reduced in recent years, is also evident from the spatial job growth pattern.”

Job growth areas are highly interconnected, it said, citing the major corridor from Cox’s Bazar through Chattogram, Feni, Comilla, Brahmanbaria, Narsingdi, Narayanganj, Dhaka city corporation, Gazipur, Mymensingh, Savar, Sirajganj, Bogura, and up to the Rangpur border adjacent to India.

“In the southwestern region, however, job growth is limited to a few areas within a patchy pattern,” it said. “These development and growth patterns have further intensified regional disparity and shaped significantly distinct regional characteristics of job growth.”

The report identified a lack of agglomeration economies, when firms and people locate near each other, in Bangladesh, due to the weak growth of secondary cities such as district headquarters and larger municipalities.

The WB said about ten of the 55 district headquarters have seen notable job growth and added that these areas have played a limited role as employment centres, struggling to sustain jobs outside major regional growth poles.

It said there is a mismatch between areas of actual job growth and the focus of urban development policies and investment.

The WB terms the mismatch as “a major policy blind spot”.

“This development trend and policy bottleneck is further undermined by institutional binding constraints, including weak planning, inefficient resource allocation, insufficient devolution and deconcentration, and weak local capacity.”

Policy makers need to rethink their spatial approach to urbanisation, adopting a new strategy that focuses on enhancing efficiency in planning and the utilisation of fiscal resources, and strengthening and empowering urban local governments, it said.

The WB suggested strengthening spatially-oriented planning and investment that responds to the differentiated needs of the distinct regions in Bangladesh. It recommended empowering urban local governments to play a more prominent role by enhancing their financial and technical capacities.

“Moving forward, Bangladesh’s future success depends on not only sustained growth and the quality of jobs but also how more and better jobs can benefit people’s lives, particularly the youth and women in Bangladesh.”