CONCLUTION

During our Mission, we observed much strength in Bangladesh's Science & Technology, and these provide an important base to build on, most particularly,

• A strong political commitment to the integration of Science & Technology instruments into the larger socioeconomic objectives of the country and to making Science & Technology a driving force in Bangladeshi modernization and industrialization; 
• An inventiveness and ingenuity that is conducive to absorption of new technologies and, most importantly, to the management and adaptation of those technologies to local requirements and the needs of Bangladeshi society; 
• An existing network of institutions engaged in Science & Technology activities that can be mobilized to make Science & Technology a driving force in Bangladeshi economic development; 
• In some sectors (notably in agriculture), people have a very strong sense of what exactly needs to be done through Science & Technology to meet the needs of production and competitiveness. 

These are important strengths, and to these must be added the universally acknowledged inventiveness of the Bangladeshi people under the adverse conditions that history inflicted on the country. Also, Bangladesh has had many accomplishments in more recent years in its quest for modernization. These factors give justified reason for optimism about the future
Yet, throughout our interviews and conversations (including those with very senior officials of the new government), it was clear that Bangladesh has now arrived at a crossroad. The new forces of globalization and regionalization are posing completely new challenges for all countries, whether they are developed or developing. For Bangladesh, as for the rest of the world, the past is no longer prologue.
The central observation of this Mission is that Bangladesh has not sufficiently adjusted its systems of Science & Technology and education to respond to its new economic and social circumstances or to meet the competition that integration into and beyond the East Asian trading market will bring. Bangladesh's current policies of relatively modest, incremental adjustments will fail to serve both the modernization aspirations of the Bangladeshi people and the stated purposes of the government. In the neighboring countries of East Asia, spectacular technological advancements — centered on ITs, biotechnology, and other high technologies — are reshaping the material basis for agriculture, industry, and the rest of the economy. Modest instrumentalism may place Bangladesh at a serious disadvantage.
Among the issues and difficulties highlighted in this report are the following:

• Policies are inconsistent and even contradictory. Economic, financial, legal, banking, credit, and institutional policies often work in contrary directions and may undermine otherwise sound policies for Science & Technology. 
• Decision-making processes pertaining to the entire Science & Technology system are slow, burdensome, and bureaucratic. If these problems are not addressed quickly, they will seriously hamper Bangladesh's efforts to integrate itself into AFTA and the global economy.
• Bangladesh does not have well-developed systems or capabilities for technical and economic forecasting or foresight. This places the country in a vulnerable position in comparison both with its more experienced neighbors and with others in the globalize marketplace. 
• Bangladesh has limited technology acquisition under existing arrangements, and some local partners perceive the cost of technology acquired through joint ventures to be high (most of which involve turnkey producers of final products, rather than of parts or components). 
• Bangladesh has a weakness in the assimilation of new technologies and underinvestment in assimilation following the purchase of new technologies. This is not the case in other countries in the Asian region, and this problem needs to be addressed urgently, as it places Bangladesh at a disadvantage. 
• The national R&D system in Bangladesh is highly fragmented. The limited resources available are not strategically well targeted.
• Perhaps most seriously, the international team was reminded repeatedly of very serious underinvestment in technology management and systems engineering. Without urgent attention to this issue, Bangladeshi ownership and control over its Science & Technology will be constrained in the competitive world it is entering. 

The Science & Technology Strategy should accord a high priority to the application of Science & Technology to the traditional sectors — especially to agriculture, forestry, and fisheries — including post harvest technologies and agro industry. These are vital investment areas for the nation and a source of productive and sustainable livelihoods for some 70% of the population. The energy and dynamism of these sectors — if aided by investments, including investments in building and applying Science & Technology — will be essential to generating the economic surplus (domestic savings) that Bangladesh needs to achieve its goal of modernization and industrialization by 2020. We emphasized this point and suggested a number of Science & Technology issues to be addressed in this context and a number of applications of high technologies in these sectors.
The national system for the allocation of resources to higher education and to research should be modified dramatically and given a clear strategic focus. We made a number of somewhat specific suggestions in this regard. Our conclusion is that the scarce resources available can yield high dividends if these suggestions are put into place and that the new mechanisms will also attract external sources of capital.
An urgent and ambitious effort is required to establish a broad national capability in technology-systems management. We are not referring to capabilities in basic or engineering science but to a national cadre adept in

• Information techniques; 
• Management-information systems; 
• Decision analysis; 
• Project formulation and assessment; 
• Project management, including scheduling and costing; 
• Technology sourcing and intellectual property rights; 
• Marketing and after-sales service; 
• Operation and maintenance of both large and small facilities; and 
• Total-quality management. 

We also emphasized the requirement for an NSI, including linkages with international knowledge networks. Innovations occur almost always at the firm level, but high value and high return on investment can result from national systems that encourage and support such innovation through taxation policies, incentives, awards, and other supports.
The four priority areas for Bangladesh's Science & Technology strategy are ITs, biotechnology, new materials, and automation. These are well known to be priority areas in many other countries, as they are the enabling technologies transforming all aspects of production and distribution. The real issue is how to judiciously apply and appropriately balance these technologies to gain comparative advantage. This is exceedingly difficult, as it requires truly vast combinations of knowledge and systems built on agility, flexibility, and entrepreneurship. If such combinations are to be achieved, a strategy is imperative. The idea that this can be achieved by way of a plan must be discarded: a good strategy serves as a compass, not as a roadmap. It invites and enables flexible responses and rapid adjustments to changing conditions and opportunities, and we believe this is both what Bangladesh requires and what it is in the process of building.