Bangladesh Small & Cottage Industries Corpo-ration (BSCIC) steps into 61st year of its glorious history and success this year. The organization started in 1957 through an Act passed by the Provincial Assembly upon the Bill placed by the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman when he was Minister for Commerce & Industry of the Provincial Government of East Pakistan in 1957. Since then BSCIC under the guidance of the Ministry of Industries has been working with commitment to attain its goal and objectives.
There is no denial of the fact that Bangladesh was long dependent mainly on agriculture. So, our people were basically agriculture minded. But, due to industrial revolution, demand of the people changed worldwide. Importantly, Bangabandhu realized this in due time that we need industrialization side by side agriculture to meet the future challenges and demand of the people of our country. So, his initiative of establishing BSCIC was not only to set an industrial organization rather to change the attitude of our people equally from agricultural mind to industrial mind, so that sustainable socio-economic development can be ensured across the country.
Of course, BSCIC has been able to pursue it and glorified its establishment by playing significant role in the development of small, medium and cottage industries and in the development of large scale industries also. Its contributions to physical infrastructure development for industrial enterprises, poverty alleviation, women entrepreneurship development, providing training and credit and pursuing financial assistance for entrepreneurs are outstanding. Its contribution to GDP and national exchequer of Bangladesh are also significant. Besides, BSCIC is currently implementing 26 more projects for balanced regional development, agglomeration of industries, facilitating SME sector and developing new products through industrialization across the country.
These activities of BSCIC have attracted us. So, in this issue of The Guardian we choose to focus on BSCIC. The issue contains a good number of articles on BSCIC activities written by BSCIC officials and its development partners. The issue also contains an exclusive interview of Chairman of BSCIC Mustak Hassan Md Iftekhar. These stories reflect the history, activities, problems, potentials, developments, contributions, achievements and future plans of BSCIC, including the different issues of the SMCI sector. We believe this issue will attract the attention of our valued readers at home and abroad and our policy makers as well; and we believe all of them will get interest in it.
It is also pertinent to mention here that the chairman in his interview informed that BSCIC has been playing a pioneering role in industrialization of Bangladesh through transforming the agrarian mindset of our people into a more industrial mindset since 1957 and has been working as the prime mover in Bangladesh to support industrialization process through the creation of an entrepreneurial society. We agree with him and wish BSCIC make a great success.
