More support from various government departments and publication of a major policy document by the government is urgently required to attract investors, said Alihussain Akberali, chairman of BSRM, one of the biggest industrial groups of the country.

The government needs to lay the future pricing policy on market-based prices of all inputs to power projects, he said in an interview.

“We gave the Board of Investment (BoI), some nine months back, four to five proposals about the problems we were facing in setting up the largest steel plant and a power project. No one from the BoI has so far called us to hear our problems nor were our applications sent to relevant departments."

"How can there be industrialisation under such circumstances?� he questioned.

The major chunk of foreign investment is in the export processing zones (EPZs) where labour intensive industries are being set up and which offer a platter of gas, power and tax incentives.

But no importance is being given to import substitution industries, he said.

“We need active support from different ministries of land, water, power, roads and highways, home and energy to help us smoothly set up the two major Tk 3,000 crore projects which will generate employment for about 1,500."

"Today pillar to post, we are just groping in the dark. Of course we are used to it but at what cost to the country?"

It will be impossible for foreign companies to come to the country to set up heavy industries outside the EPZs, Akberali said.

Talking about his own group, the BSRM chairman said there were only 300 employees to start with and today the group boasts to have a workforce exceeding 1,700 which would grow by another 750 by the next year and a half.

BSRM made a modest beginning in the early 1950s under the aegis of his father Akberali Africawala, when the first steel re-rolling mill was set up in the then East