← Government Watch

Inter-Ministerial Working Group on Foreign Direct Investment

parliamentary_committee · unverified (verified 2026-05-17)

Profile

Head
—
Role
—
Annual budget
—
Staff
—
Established
—
Legal basis
No gazette notification or statutory instrument establishing a body under this exact name has been located. The closest statutory basis is the Bangladesh Investment Development Authority Act 2016 (effective 1 September 2016), which creates a 17-member BIDA governing board with the Prime Minister as chairman and Finance Minister as vice-chairman, constituting the apex inter-ministerial governance body for FDI policy. The Investment Coordination Committee (ICC) under the Yunus interim government was constituted by a notification from the Chief Adviser's Office (reported August 2025) and chaired by the Special Envoy for International Affairs; no equivalent gazette for the ICC or any successor body under the Tarique Rahman government has been located.

No body formally named 'Inter-Ministerial Working Group on Foreign Direct Investment' has been documented in primary sources. The active FDI cross-ministry coordination mechanism under the Tarique Rahman government (from February 2026) is operationally centred on BIDA's statutory governing board (PM-chaired under the BIDA Act 2016) and the 180-day action plan's inter-ministerial coordination commitment. Whether the Investment Coordination Committee (ICC), which held five documented meetings under the Yunus interim government through November 2025, continues under the Tarique government is not confirmed in press or official sources reviewed.

Recent activity

Provenance & notes

Exhaustive search of BIDA's official website (investbangladesh.gov.bd), BSS News, The Business Standard, The Daily Star, The Financial Express, Dhaka Tribune, New Age, Bonikbarta, UNCTAD, and Bangladesh Government Gazette archives found no primary source naming a body called 'Inter-Ministerial Working Group on Foreign Direct Investment'. The entity slug was assigned in advance; the body as named does not appear to exist as a distinct gazetted entity. Two real bodies carry overlapping functions: (1) The BIDA Governing Board, a 17-member statutory inter-ministerial body under the Bangladesh Investment Development Authority Act 2016, chaired by the Prime Minister with the Finance Minister as vice-chairman; this is the apex formal mechanism. (2) The Investment Coordination Committee (ICC), an operational cross-agency coordination body constituted under the Yunus interim government (2024-2026), chaired by Special Envoy Lutfey Siddiqi, with at least five documented meetings through November 2025; its mandate, membership (BIDA, Bangladesh Bank, NBR, Finance Secretariat, Commerce, Public Administration), and meeting records match the intent of the slug. Whether the ICC or an equivalent body was reconstituted under PM Tarique Rahman (sworn 2026-02-17) is not confirmed in any source reviewed. The Tarique government's 180-day action plan (March 2026) references 'stronger inter-ministerial coordination' as a goal, not a specific institution. Verification status is 'unverified': the entity name has no primary-source confirmation; creating or editing this record should wait for either a gazette notification establishing the body or an official BIDA/Cabinet Division announcement naming it. If the intention was to document the ICC, that record should use the slug 'investment-coordination-committee' with verification_status 'partial' (ICC documented under Yunus government but continuity under Tarique government unconfirmed).

Sources