Investment road show in Bangkok

The delegation of Bhutan investment road show arrived in Bangkok, which is the last destination, yesterday.

Before reaching Bangkok, the delegation made presen­tations on Bhutan as the new investment destination to more than 50 business people in Singapore on October 5.

Joni Herison of Druk Asia Private Limited, the only Dru­kair ticketing agent in Singa­pore, said the road show was beneficial to many prominent business personalities who wanted to expand their busi­nesses and invest in Bhutan. Joni has been working with the Drukair Corporation sending tourists to Bhutan via Singapore.

“A lot of businessmen in Singapore were interested to invest in Bhutan but they lacked concrete information on how to go about it,” he said, adding that the presenta­tions made by the Bhutanese officials gave a lot more idea on why and how to invest in Bhutan.

“The road show proved to be a hub of information for us,” said Joni.

Singaporean international expertise (IE) also made presentations on interna­tional trade opportunities in Singapore.

V.R Harikrishnan, the Director of the Integra Tech Pvt Ltd, who also has partner­ships with IBM, Lenovo, Mi­crosoft and Oracle, said that he was fascinated by the idea of the Thimphu Tech Park and that he would be interested in investing in Bhutan.

He, however, lamented that there were no business representatives from among IT vendors or industries in the Bhutanese delegation with whom he could have initiated business talks.

Eric Jin, the Director of Building and Construction Authority and Companies, also expressed his interest in the construction industry in Bhutan and how the company could help build environ­mentally-friendly infrastruc­tures in Bhutan. He said that Singapore and Bhutan shared the similarity of being small nations with similar popula­tion.

Meanwhile, in Bangladesh, Bhutan was asked to invest in the Bangladeshi energy and power sectors. The senior vice president of the Dhaka Cham­ber of Commerce and Indus­try, M Shahjahan Khan, made an appeal that Bhutan invest in the power, energy and tourism sectors in Bangladesh under a public-private part­nership initiative.

Shahjahan Khan stressed that it was important for the two countries to reduce the imbalance in bilateral trade and increase the volume of trade. He said that all means of connectivity (air and land) was also crucial.

So far, more than 500 busi­ness people in Dhaka, India and Singapore attended the show.