Bangladesh adds 2 million people to its labour force every year, while it only creates about 1 million genuine jobs, including migrants. In addition, although Bangladesh has performed well in terms of manufacturing exports, the growth has produced very few productive jobs for individuals entering the labour force. In comparison, Bangladesh’s competitors have a much more diversified export base. Finally, Bangladesh’s record in attracting FDI despite the low cost of labour has been dismal.

The government of Bangladesh, therefore, needs an effective partner to help it provide an effective environment for private sector growth, thereby unlocking the private sector’s tremendous potential to develop and grow to meet the nation’s development goals and to create the jobs necessary to transform Bangladesh into a middle-income country by the 50th year of its birth. With this background, BUILD came into existence to become the government’s partner and platform to promote private sector development, investment, jobs and, therefore, growth in Bangladesh.

The Sustainability and Green Growth Working Committee (SGGWC), co-chaired by BGMEA and Bangladesh Secretary Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change (MoEFCC), works as a public private dialogue (PPD) platform to gather inputs from government, private sector, civil society, and development partners to make businesses resource-efficient and environmentally responsible. The specific objectives of the Sustainability and Green Growth Working Committee (SGGWC) are as follows:

- To advocate policy recommendations on enabling the private sector to achieve environmental sustainability and resource use efficiency.

- To engage policymakers, private sector, civil society and development partners through dialogues, meetings, and other interactive processes to create awareness, interest and activities on climate change, environmental damage, disaster risk reduction for developing compliant and resource-efficient entrepreneurship.

- To bridge the twin goals of sustainability and competitiveness in various industry sectors by conducting research and facilitating sectoral planning and strategy development.

The SGGWC team has undertaken a number of projects as well, such as the Textile Sustainability Platform (phases 1 to 3), Assessing Investment Opportunities for MSMEs in Southwest Bangladesh, Business Opportunities in Mongla and Southwest region for climate migrants, climate finance transparency mechanism (CFTM), Sustainable Transportation in Bangladesh, and so on.