US Firms Pledge $5 Billion More for Bangladesh as Overall FDI Keeps Sliding

A Pledge at a Difficult Moment

Bangladesh's commerce minister used the American Chamber of Commerce's 30th anniversary dinner in Dhaka on September 12 to make a bold claim about where the two countries' economic relationship is headed. Khandaker Abdul Muktadir told the room at the Radisson Blu Water Garden that US investors have committed to putting another five billion dollars into Bangladesh over the next five years, a figure that would roughly match everything AmCham's member companies have invested in the country to date. The government, he said, is fully prepared to work closely with US firms to boost investment, create jobs, transfer technology and widen economic opportunity, and he framed the moment as the opening of what he called a more ambitious next chapter in Bangladesh-US economic relations.

The announcement lands at a moment when Bangladesh badly needs a reason for optimism on the investment front. The country's overall foreign direct investment fell 15 percent to just 1.47 billion dollars in FY2025-26, and weak infrastructure remains the single most commonly cited obstacle keeping foreign capital on the sidelines, a point this publication has covered in the context of Bangladesh's recent investment protection agreement with Hong Kong. A pledge of new American capital roughly equal to three and a half times the country's entire FDI intake for the year is, on paper, the kind of number that could meaningfully move that picture, assuming it materializes.

What AmCham Already Represents

The scale of the American Chamber's existing footprint helps explain why officials are taking the pledge seriously. AmCham member companies have already invested more than five billion dollars in Bangladesh, and US firms operating here now contribute over 20 percent of the country's total tax revenue, according to figures cited at the anniversary event. Bilateral trade between the two countries exceeds 13 billion dollars a year. AmCham President Syed Mohammad Kamal and Vice President Ala Uddin Azad both spoke at the event alongside US Ambassador to Bangladesh Brent T Christensen, underscoring that the commitment carries backing from the diplomatic as well as the commercial side of the relationship.

Metric	Figure
New US investment pledge (next 5 years)	$5 billion
AmCham members' existing investment in Bangladesh	$5+ billion
US firms' share of national tax revenue	20%+
Annual Bangladesh-US bilateral trade	$13+ billion
Bangladesh's total FDI, FY2025-26	$1.47 billion (down 15% year on year)

Put side by side, those numbers explain both the appeal and the scale of the challenge. If US investors genuinely deploy five billion dollars over five years, that alone would represent close to a billion dollars a year, a meaningful addition on top of a total annual FDI figure that currently sits under a billion and a half. It would also come from a set of investors who, unlike many prospective new entrants, already understand Bangladesh's regulatory environment and have a multi-decade track record of operating here.

The Deals Meant to Underpin the Pledge

The commitment does not exist in isolation. Earlier this year, Bangladesh and the United States reached an Agreement on Reciprocal Trade, which Ambassador Christensen said would, once implemented, lower tariffs, expand market access, strengthen intellectual property protections and promote anti-corruption, labor and environmental standards. In May, the two countries also signed an Energy Memorandum of Understanding, a deal officials have described as repositioning the United States as Bangladesh's leading energy investment partner rather than simply a fuel supplier. Taken together, the trade agreement and the energy pact are the scaffolding officials are pointing to as evidence that the new five billion dollar figure is more than just a toast at an anniversary dinner.

Still, AmCham's own leadership used the same event to flag what remains unresolved. Kamal called on the government to establish a transparent energy roadmap, arguing that predictable energy planning is what will actually let investors commit capital with confidence rather than caution. That request is not abstract. This publication reported last week that a gas supply disruption following a fire at the Maheshkhali LNG terminal helped drag the Dhaka stock market to a two and a half month low, rattling investors across sectors that depend on reliable power and fuel supply. For American manufacturers weighing whether to expand production in Bangladesh, that kind of energy volatility is precisely the risk a roadmap would need to address.

Why the Overall FDI Picture Makes This Pledge Matter More

Bangladesh's FDI numbers have been trending in the wrong direction for a while, and the American pledge is arriving squarely into that gap. The 15 percent decline to 1.47 billion dollars in FY2025-26 followed a year in which the country signed a separate investment protection agreement with Hong Kong, then its seventh largest FDI source, precisely because officials recognized that legal guarantees, not just tax incentives, are what move institutional investors. The pattern across both the Hong Kong and the American deals is the same: Bangladesh is leaning on formal government to government agreements and chamber level commitments to try to reverse a slide that incentives alone have not fixed.

Whether that approach works will depend heavily on follow through. Pledges of this kind, announced at anniversary dinners and diplomatic functions, are easier to make than to bank. The gap between an aspirational five year target and five billion dollars of capital actually landing in factories, ports and energy projects is where past commitments in Bangladesh's investment history have sometimes stalled, usually on the same obstacles AmCham's own leadership just named: energy reliability, infrastructure gaps and regulatory predictability.

What to Watch Next

The most useful signal over the coming months will not be more speeches but actual capital allocation, whether from AmCham member firms already on the ground expanding existing operations, or from new US entrants exploring Bangladesh for the first time under the umbrella of the trade and energy agreements signed this year. Given that US companies already account for more than a fifth of Bangladesh's tax revenue despite representing a relatively concentrated set of firms, even a partial realization of the five billion dollar pledge, channeled into energy, manufacturing or digital infrastructure, could meaningfully shift the trajectory of a national FDI figure that has been sliding for two consecutive years. The energy roadmap AmCham is asking for may end up being the single clearest test of whether this pledge becomes real investment or simply the latest in a long line of ambitious announcements.