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14 firms buy forms for mobile licence
Fourteen companies, three of them foreign,
are said to have bought application forms for
mobile operation licence against an invitation
for the award of six licences in Bangladesh.
The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory
Commission invited proposals from Bangladeshi
companies, joint ventures with local partners,
or overseas companies with 100 per cent foreign
investment having experience in
telecommunication sector for GSM mobile service
for licences to set up, maintain and operation
such system for general public use.
The licence will be given for an initial period
of 15 years, covering the whole of Bangladesh,
and after the time, it may be renewed by the
commission subject to satisfactory performance.
There are five mobile operators at present. Four
of them — GrameenPhone, AkTtel, BanglaLink and
the state-owned Teletalk — operate on GSM;
CityCell operates on code division multiple
access.The five companies together have about 70
lakh subscribers.
Exports may grow 12 pc in next 15 months
The country may attain a 12 percent export
growth in next fifteen months, which is seen
slightly slower than that in the last financial
year. Non-traditional, non-apparel exports are
expected to by over 30 per cent; apparel exports
will keep growing but at a slower rate. The
performance of exports, on a shipment basis, may
be $9.8 billion.
Experts forecast, a small depreciation of the
currency, not more than 5 per cent over the
year, the nominal exchange rate would remain
less than Taka 70 per dollar. Export growth
should continue in the apparel sector and for
non-traditional exports. Traditional exports
will, however, not increase.
Subaru vehicles at REL Motors' new showroom
REL Motors Ltd, a concern of Rangs Group of
Companies, has recently opened the company's
first automobile showroom at Asad Gate on Mirpur
Road in Dhaka. Aktar Hussain, chairman and
managing director of the company, was present at
the inauguration of the showroom. The company as
a sole distributor will market and sell Subaru
brand vehicles of Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd in
the country. The vehicles feature AWD, cruise
control and highly efficient engine performance,
according to apress release.
GMG flight to Colombo from November
GMG Airlines will operate direct flights
between Dhaka and Colombo in Sri Lanka from
November with a stop-over in the Maldives. GMG
is a private airline. It is planning to operate
two direct flights a week from Dhaka. GMG
earlier be beginning its operations to its third
international destination, after China and
India. The main reason to target Colombo is to
attract the Bangladesh expatriates in India and
Maldives
Local IT market size to be to Tk 1800cr by
2008
The IT market is likely to rise to Tk 1,780
crore by 2008 while the market size now is
estimated at Tk 370 crore. The high growth might
be achieved through implementation of different
e-governance projects, banking sector, telecom
and power & energy sectors and large-scale
automation in the private sectors.
Bangladesh Association of Software and
Information Services (BASIS) sources said, more
software use in important government sectors
like customs, tax and land record management can
contribute significantly in additional revenue
collection by the government. The major problem
for the growth of local software companies is
the access to finance.
Financial reforms see mixed results
Financial intermediation as a service
sector, one of the major sectors of the GDP,
grew by 9 per cent in fiscal year 2005
reflecting a strengthened financial sector.
At the same time adoption of reform measures,
mostly in response to the conditionality of the
international financial institutions, is yet to
yield any results. The adjustment process to the
prescribed reforms has rather become quite
costly, the volatile foreign exchange market
being its latest manifestation.
Ratio of the gross non-performing loans of the
overall banking system came down to 15.8 per
cent of the total outstanding loans in June 2005
from 31.5 per cent in December 2001. Improvement
in the banking system and vibrancy in the
capital market have been touted as major success
stories during the four years of the BNP-led
alliance government. Gradual reduction of
non-performing loans — almost halved between
end-2001 and mid-2005 — with better recovery and
wider response to the initial public offerings
are among the positive indicators.
The improvement in the defaulted loan situation
was mainly due to writing off bad debts dating
back five years or more. The move was coupled
with a stronger recovery drive under the strict
supervision of the Bangladesh Bank. As the
central bank began to tighten money supply to
curb inflation, increase in lending rates
appeared as a crucial instrument and the
financial sector went through fluctuations,
adjusting to the process. The Bangladesh Bank
introduced the write-off system in early 2003,
adopting the international standard practice. It
also introduced an early warning system in 2004
to streamline its supervision of banks facing
crises.
Recovery of industrial term loans posted 79 per
cent growth in fiscal year 2004-05 which was
only 15.1 per cent in 2001-02, according to the
central bank’s statistics.
Focus on four years
As the BNP-led government has completed the
fourth year of its five-year tenure, Prime
Minister Begum Khaleda Zia in her address to the
nation has admitted that her government has
failed to fulfill many of its election promises.
It was an honest confession that may have won
her some new friends amongst the fence sitters
rather than convincing her foes. For this her
speechwriter and the prime minister herself
deserve some kudos firstly for not trying to
hoodwink the people and on her part to agree to
tell people the plain truth. However, it would
have even better for her to address the reasons
for the failure and to announce a new roadmap of
what she intends to do during her remaining but
fast disappearing tenure.
Be that as it may, the failures of the
government’s handling of major issues and its
penchant for baulking at taking firm decisions
timely and giving in to whispers of the vested
interest groups have now caught up with it. It
is becoming increasingly clear that the BNP-led
four party coalition government can’t do
anything right when it is needed to be done –
beginning from the acceptance of tender for
setting up power plants to finishing the belated
submarine cable project, settling the dispute of
the lighterage vessel owners or taking timely
action against the so called Islamic militants
who are bent upon tearing the country upside
down with or without help from outside.
A cursory look at the media would give
indications how some of the problems that are
likely to devour the government’s economic and a
few other successes elsewhere would not have
existed even now had the right decisions been
taken at the right moment. The monstrous power
outages and nagging load shedding in the
evenings – there is a gap of over 1,000mw in
demand and supply of electricity – together with
the work stoppages by the lighterage vessels
effectively paralyzing the Chittagong Port
threatened to derail the country’s economy. The
government’s failure to take strong actions
against those within the coalition who are being
accused of helping the Islamic militants has
smeared its own image.
Who is going to suffer ultimately for this
mishandling? The people will, of course. The
importers would invariably pass costs on to the
consumers and there would be another round or
price hike of the imported commodities for which
the government, no doubt, would also be blamed.
No administration worth its salt would allow
such a situation to develop at any cost. But who
cares? There is no accountability in the
government and nobody seems interested in doing
his or her job properly.
Power and light
Despite the promises made by the state
minister for power, there is no sign of
improvement in the continuing acute power crisis
in the country. It does not require a genius to
figure out that the crisis would not have
reached this proportion had the government stuck
to its earlier decision and allow the parties to
set up power plants after winning the
international tenders. This indecision, or to be
more specific, wrong decision, has delayed the
generation of over 600mw electricity by years.
Similar inaction in some other cases in the
power sector has also contributed to the
creation of this mess.
The peak hour load in Bangladesh now is over
4,200mw and to meet the growing demand it
requires a new power plant with 450mw capacity
to go into production each year. Only a couple
100mw has been added in the last four years. Now
the existing power plants could hardly supply
3,200mw resulting in a load shedding of about
1,000mw. The load shedding would have been much
higher but for the smaller power plants allowed
to the larger manufacturers in the recent past
to generate their own power. These captive power
plants together have a capacity to generate
1,000mw electricity. In view of the magnitude of
the problem, analysts are of the view that the
coalition government soon after coming to power
should have attempted to sort out this problem
on a war footing.
The economic damage caused by frequent power
failures and the delays in the ports caused for
various avoidable reasons, when quantified,
could become huge. For example, the World Bank
and other multilateral agencies have repeatedly
pointed out in many of their regular studies
that the nagging power failures rob the nation’s
GDP of two percent growth. In addition, the
studies suggested that the malfunctioning and
delays in clearing cargo – both meant for import
and export items – at the country’s principal
seaport of Chittagong also cost another one
percent of the GDP.
Unfortunately, instead of undertaking the
necessary reforms in the power sector and taking
the right decisions to mobilize resources in
setting up new power plants, the concerned
authority lost sight of reality and went beating
about the bush. As a result, the World Bank
delayed bankrolling of the reform projects and
raised objections to certain power sector
related projects.
Linking highway
The lack of proper coordination between the
Planning Commission on one side and the ministry
of telecommunication and Bangladesh Telegraph
and Telephone Board is posing a problem for the
smooth implementation of the already delayed
submarine cable project. The project, now being
implemented by the contractors of an
international consortium of Southeast Asia-
Middle East – Western Europe – 4 (SEA-ME-WE-4),
could be further delayed if the contractors are
not paid their bills on time.
The delay in the project implementation would
also adversely affect the development of the
country’s IT industry and Internet connectivity.
The project has been projected to be implemented
in FY2005-06 that is by June next year. However,
indications suggest the lack of proper
coordination between the concerned authorities
may create problem for the smooth and timely
implementation of the project. Unless the
concerned ministers take measures to ensure that
funds are released on time and avoid cropping up
of bottlenecks, the implementation would be
affected.
Violence and behaviour patterns
The violence which rocked the area around
the Export Processing Zone in Savar the other
day should be reason for all of us to think of
the behavioural changes we may be going through.
It needs no wisdom for one to know that such
changes have been negative, which is indication
enough of the restiveness that is increasingly
defining our attitude to life in general.
The EPZ violence raises that other spectre of
rapidly worsening behaviour on the part of a lot
of people in this country. One only has to
recall the virulence with which the workers in
many of the business establishments in the area
took to the streets when news came in of the
truck collision and the death of some of their
fellow workers. It is again a strong sign of our
impatient nature that every time a mishap
occurs, the first step that some people take is
to make sure that there is some follow-up, in
the form of more of the same.
We surely cannot put the blame for such
behaviour patterns on a particular or single
group, for we have over a long period of time
observed that even among people we expect to act
responsibly there is that clear propensity to
react to tragic situations in a way that leaves
us all worried. When a student falls under the
wheels of a bus or truck, other students quickly
make it a point to torch a lot of other vehicles
as a way of making their protest known. A few
weeks ago, the officers and employees of
Bangladesh Biman felt little or no embarrassment
when they went on strike in support of their
various demands, forgetting completely the
predicament in which their action had left the
hundreds of people coming into the country or
trying to go out of it.
These are but a few illustrations of the falling
patterns of behaviour in some important segments
of our society. Overall, they reveal the image
of a nation that is rapidly becoming impatient
and even intolerant. In the larger sense of the
meaning, such behaviour can only point to the
kind of de-civilising we as a society perhaps
have been going through.
Of course there are all the social and
psychological explanations for such behaviour.
And surely all our restive nature, all our anger
has to do with the nature of politics as it has
played out in our lives. Would it not be right,
therefore, for everyone who matters — in
politics, in administration, in civil society —
to reflect on the root causes behind such
explosive misery?
Money for begetting money
The most recent report by the United
Nations’ Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
shows 72 per cent growth in FDI inflow into
Bangladesh with a volume of $460 million in the
calendar year of 2004 compared to $268 million
in 2003.
Investment figures have shown a rising trend in
the last four years of the BNP-led alliance
rule, in spite of an unfriendly business climate
dominated by political considerations, and
numerous infrastructural and bureaucratic
bottlenecks. The investment figures would have
been much higher if the government had not
failed to project a positive image of the
Bangladesh in spite of a much-trumpeted Country
Promotion Council headed by the foreign
minister.
Telecommunications, energy and power, textiles,
services and chemicals are the five major
sectors that have attracted most of the
investment. The country is set to receive about
$8 billion in FDI over the next three years, if
proposals of big companies like Tata are
implemented.
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