Bangladesh Economy: News & Updates

[eastwatch]

120,000 vehicles to ply Dhk-Ctg Highway daily | TRADE & MARKET | Financial Express :: Financial Newspaper of Bangladesh

 

[extra terrestrial]

120,000 vehicles to ply Dhk-Ctg Highway daily | TRADE & MARKET | Financial Express :: Financial Newspaper of Bangladesh

"He said importance of the highway is much more than the Tokyo-Osaka corridor, which is called the Japanese backbone corridor."

That's a huge statement!

 

[eastwatch]

"He said importance of the highway is much more than the Tokyo-Osaka corridor, which is called the Japanese backbone corridor."

That's a huge statement!

Tokyo-Osaka elevated expressway is called TOMEI toll expressway in Japan. It is connected to big commercial centers like Yokohama, Nagoya, Kyoto and Kobe as well. This route is really is the blood vein of Japan's economic activities.

I think, Japanese planners can see the importance of the proposed 251 km 8-lane toll free highway.
However, I have reasons to believe this highway alone cannot support economic activities after, say, 10 years from now. A new elevated toll expressway will be needed for a fast transport of goods.

 

[extra terrestrial]

Tokyo-Osaka elevated expressway is called TOMEI toll expressway in Japan. It is connected to big commercial centers like Yokohama, Nagoya, Kyoto and Kobe as well. This route is really is the blood vein of Japan's economic activities.

I think, Japanese planners can see the importance of the proposed 251 km 8-lane toll free highway.
However, I have reasons to believe this highway alone cannot support economic activities after, say, 10 years from now. A new elevated toll expressway will be needed for a fast transport of goods.

I was referring to the significance of comparing the Tokyo-Osaka highway with the Dhaka-Chittagong highway, shows our economic potentials.

Also should we put more emphasize on railway for the transportation of goods? as some experts argue that it is more cost effective. There was a Chinese proposal of constructing Dhaka-Chittagong elevated railway, don't know what happened to that project.

 

[eastwatch]

The Daily Amaderorthoneeti November 20, 2013

I did not upload the news in Bengali, because it does not come well. Click the link to read that JICA & Dhaka/BD Authorities have selected a Japanese Consultant for the JICA-financed Metro Rail Project in Dhaka. The company is Nippon Koei, although in Bangla the name is given something as Nippon Koee wrongly.

I believe, selection of a Consultant is a milestone for the said project. Nippon Koei is a very large civil engineering consulting firm in Japan that deals with various type of large projects, such as, highways/expressways, long bridges (truss, suspension or cable-stayed), sluice gates, ports, airports, railway lines etc.

JICA will finance three separate, but inter-linked railway lines in the Dhaka City. Two will rin in longitudinal direction and the third one will run in a loop. The 3rd one will allow people to change trains for other directions.

Budget for the 1st line is $2.8 billion, this is what I know.

 

[eastwatch]

Purbachal 300Ft Highway Kanchon connected
On average the width of a single lane is 5 feet, at 300 feet thats 60 lanes. Take away 50% for pavement and dividers. Widths wider than Manik Mia Avenue and that too over a distance of 10 kms. Now who said Dhaka doesn't have roads. Supercars, this is your road

. Cheers...!

This pictures were taken by me a long time back,the recent condition is great and the work was stopped for a long time at the middle but resumed againView attachment 10391View attachment 10392View attachment 10393View attachment 10394

Bold Part: Thanks for the post and uploading the pictures. However, note that a lane cannot be only 5 feet wide. It will have to be 2.7m to 3.0m, or 8.4 to 9.0 feet, at least. Of course, 5' is good enough for a rickshaw.

 

[Skies]

TICFA: The capitulation
December 5, 2013 | Filed under: Opinions | Posted by: bdchronicle

After years of fruitless deliberations, the government has finally succumbed to internal and external imperatives to sign a Trade and Investment Cooperation Forum Agreement (TICFA) with the USA. The USA had sent the first draft of the agreement under the rubric of Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) to the Ministry of Commerce more than a decade ago. The USA has similar innocuous-looking agreements with a host of relatively small countries. The principal purpose of these agreements is to provide a forum for regular discussions on trade and investment related issues between the United States Trade Representative (USTR) and the trade ministries of these countries.

The Ministry of Commerce which looks after trade issues of the country had decided against accepting the draft of the agreement on the ground that the text could unduly constraint Bangladesh’s policy space. That seemed to have been the position of the Ministry until recently.

The original draft of TIFA attempted to commit Bangladesh on core labour standards, environmental standards, corruption and intellectual property rights. All these issues, especially the last, were subjects of negotiations at the WTO. The developing countries were particularly wary of any attempt to link trade issues with labour and environmental standards. The Ministry, which was intensely involved in the WTO negotiations, thought it unwise to commit Bangladesh on these issues outside of the WTO.

It was also alarmed by the inclusion of corruption in the text. Transparency International had ranked Bangladesh as the most corrupt nation of the world little over a year ago (June 2001) during the fag end of the tenure of the then Awami League-led government. It was common sense that the situation was unlikely to improve much in the near term. The Ministry was understandably nervous about the implications of such a provision in TIFA for future multilateral and bilateral trade negotiations.

Since then more drafts of TIFA were considered. The USA appeared to have at one stage relented on corruption and also on environmental standards, but it remained steadfast on the other two. Labour standards were a tricky issue; the government was acutely aware of the awful state of labour relations in the industrial sector. The Tazreen fire and Rana Plaza collapse seemed to have finally broken the resolve of the government to resist on labour issues. However, the extent of capitulation in the negotiations was not known until the agreement under the new rubric TICFA was signed and the USTR published the agreement on its website (Bangladesh is yet to make it available).

The importance given to labour issues should be evident from the following statement of the USTR Ambassador Michael Froman after signing of the agreement:“Importantly, we’ll also be able to track and discuss Bangladeshi efforts to improve worker safety and worker rights. This is an important priority for the United States as Bangladesh seeks to prevent more tragedies in its ready-made garment sector.” (United States, Bangladesh Sign Trade and Investment Cooperation Forum Agreement (TICFA) | Office of the United States Trade Representative) Bangladesh may expect to answer some tough questions on worker rights and safety issues in the meetings of the Forum. The negotiating skills of the Ministry of Commerce officials will be severely tested when they face the formidable trade negotiators from the USA armed with TICFA clauses.

All the major issues that were in the first draft of TIFA appear to have been revived and included in TICFA. Not only that the objections raised by Ministry officials and civil society experts during the last eleven years on labour and environmental standards and IPR have been overridden, the government even agreed on the inclusion of corruption in the agreement. If these were done conscientiously with the best interest of trade and investment of the country in mind there would not be much to object. However, there is a nagging suspicion that it was done more to appease an irate USA than to protect the legitimate interests of Bangladesh. Much has been written on this matter in the media.

The AL-led government has picked up an unwarranted quarrel with the USA over its blatant mistreatment of Dr. Yunus and Grameen Bank. The USA made its position on this matter very explicit and public. Several high level emissaries, including the Secretary of State, tried to persuade the government not to harass Dr. Yunus and Grameen Bank. But all these only enraged the vengeful Prime Minister who seemed hell bent to settle a score with Dr Yunus. To underscore her displeasure she took the extraordinary step of refusing to meet a visiting US Assistant Secretary of State, and did not give audience to the voluble US Ambassador for a long time.

The situation seemed to have changed with the approach of the general election. The government is staring at certain defeat according to most polls. It has contrived a way to keep the opposition out of the election race, but its attempt to hold the election without the opposition has led to widespread protests and violence. It has been made abundantly clear by the international community (sans India) that such an election will not be credible. The government seems to be belatedly trying to garner at least some support from the international community. The PM has finally met the US Ambassador a few days ago for a long interview. TICFA is perhaps another manifestation of a last-ditch attempt to appease the USA. It is rumoured that USA is also being offered some lucrative contracts.

In taking these measures the AL-led government has gone against the grains of the principle of good policy making. It is an old wisdom of economics that government should adopt the policy that most directly addresses the problem. Any policy that skirts the main problem will be both expensive and of limited usefulness. For example, the root cause of an ongoing inflation is excessive money supply. A reduction in the money supply is the correct policy measure to reduce inflation. But sometimes government resorts to price controls, rationing, supply-demand management etc. to control inflation. These usually fail to achieve the objective; instead additional distortions are introduced that impose substantial costs on the economy.

The root cause of the dispute with the USA is apparently the mistreatment of Nobel Peace Prize winners Dr Yunus and Grameen Bank. TICFA does not address this issue, and hence will not fully resolve the dispute. The Prime Minister and her advisers probably hope that the concessions given to the USA will sufficiently soften its negative attitude toward the Awami League. This can, if at all, succeed only partially since the USA is unlikely to take kindly to the uncalled for harassment of a long time friend who wears the US Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal on his lapel in addition to Nobel Peace Prize. The loss of credibility in supporting an unpopular and increasingly oppressive regime will also weigh heavily.

TICFA was done in secrecy; it was not debated in the Parliament and the public was never taken into confidence. The agreement was eventually signed into effect not by a regular government, but by a controversial interim government of sorts. Since an election-time interim government is not supposed to do anything but routine work in any democratic country, it is questionable if it was proper of them (and of the USA) to sign an international treaty.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs proffered a rather lame excuse that the agreement was finalised before the interim government came into being. It would seem that the AL-led government was unsure of the usefulness of signing TICFA until the last moment. Obviously, Bangladesh got into this agreement from a position of weakness.

The USA made full use of the government’s vulnerability to write the text in a manner of its choosing. Perhaps as an acknowledgement of Bangladesh’s discomfort with TIFA, it has superficially changed the title of the agreement. All that can be hoped for now is that the text dictated by the US is not entirely contrary to Bangladesh interests and its negotiators can make use of any opportunities to strike a balance. TICFA will remain as another example of how not to do an international treaty.

Source: Bd news24

TICFA: The capitulation | The Bangladesh Chronicle

 

[Skies]

TICFA agreement challenged in HC
Staff Correspondent

A writ petition was filed on Wednesday in public interest seeking a directive on the government to explain as to why signing of Trade and Investment Cooperation Framework Agreement with the USA should not be declared unconstitutional.
In the writ petition filed by three Supreme Court lawyers—Md. Nasir Uddin, Ariful Islam and M Monirul Islam Khan—and a citizen, Abdullah Al Mamun, also prayed for a directive to prevent the authorities from taking further steps to implement the treaty signed on November 25, 2013 in Washington.
The secretaries to the cabinet division, the prime minister’s office, law, commerce, foreign, and US ambassador to Bangladesh were made respondents to the writ petition.
The Trade and Investment Cooperation Framework Agreement, in short TICFA, stipulates setting up of a US-Bangladesh Forum on Trade and Investment on November 25.
The draft Ticfa deal states that the forum meetings would monitor bilateral trade and investment relations and identify the opportunities for expansion of trade and investment and identify and remove the hindrances.
The forum would seek the advice from the private sector and civil society on matters relating to its work.
The writ petition stated that the treaty was signed in violation of Article 145A of the Constitution which states ‘all treaties with foreign countries shall be submitted to the President, who shall cause them to be laid before Parliament, provided that any such treaty connected with national security shall be laid in a secret session of Parliament.’
The petition said that the USA signed TICFA only with relatively small developing countries and economic blocs. None of the large emerging countries like Argentina, Brazil, China or India had agreed to sign TIFA. The only developed countries to sign TICFA are Iceland, Switzerland and New Zealand.
There was a conspiracy that the GSP (Generalised System of Preferences) facility was introduced only with the aim to put pressure on the government on signing TICFA or face withdrawal of GSP facility at one stage on flimsy grounds, said the petition.
It said that being a Least Developed Country, Bangladesh enjoys certain privileges with World Trade Organisation and no treaty should be signed which one day may affect our relationship with WTO.
Many believed that USA took advantage of the ongoing political unrest and persuaded Bangladesh to sign the treaty without even disclosing its contents to the media, said the petition.
The petition said that all the national dailies and members of the civil society had raised serious concern about the way it was signed almost secretly.

TICFA agreement challenged in HC

 

[Skies]

EU GSP threat looms large
December 5, 2013 | Filed under: Economy | Posted by: bdchronicle



Bangladesh runs the risk of losing its Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) facilities in the European Union (EU) if it fails to fulfil key EU conditions – trade union rights for workers and greater safety in workplace – within a given timeframe.
EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht issued the threat at the ninth ministerial-level summit of the World Trade Organisation in Indonesia on Wednesday.

Bangladesh had earlier forfeited its special trading status in the US market, at least in connection with a set of non-apparel commodities, for similar shortcomings.

Gucht said Bangladesh would have to achieve significant progress within a fixed timeframe in line with the roadmap to keep the duty-free access to the EU market.

Bangladesh had agreed in July to fulfil conditions laid by the EU following a fire in Tazreen Fashions and the Rana Plaza collapse that killed over a thousand people.

Under the agreement, the EU expects Bangladesh to give workers trade union rights and enhance workplace safety within one year before reviewing its decision.

The EU trade commissioner said the Bangladesh government and EU were working together to improve the working environment in the country’s garment factories.

The work is progressing in keeping with a roadmap, the commissioner said, adding that Bangladesh must take huge strides to retain its GSP status.

Gucht said at present Bangladesh is getting duty- and quota-free access to the EU market on all products except weapons.

The US revocation of the GSP has not affected Bangladesh in any significant manner as the US facility covered only a small variety of commodities that already excluded the country’s foremost export, readymade garments.

But if the EU were to withdraw or suspend the facility, Bangladesh would suffer a huge setback, the commissioner said.

The EU was eager to let Bangladesh retain the preferential status but for that it would have to strictly follow the roadmap, Gucht said.

Source: Bd news24

EU GSP threat looms large | The Bangladesh Chronicle

 

[IamBengali]

Bangladesh way ahead of Pakistan

(Report by Pakistani media)

 

[srabon]

i do not agree, we need to keep all in balance, if we suddenly have reserve of $50billion which is huge. It will affect badly our exports because it will make taka strong against USD. So we will no longer have advance of cheap products.

Yeah i do agree about this .

 

[IamBengali]

Ijtema renovation project. World's second largest Muslim pilgrimage after Hajj held in Bangladesh every year.

 

[IamBengali]

Purbachal Cultural Complex, Purbachal, New Dhaka

 

[kalu_miah]

Whiskey Byproduct Could Purify Water - PSFK

Discovered by accident when researching barley husks, a new method will soon remove industrial arsenic contamination from H2O.

Guardian on January 2, 2014. @Guardian

This article titled “Draff to dram: water cleanser created in chance study of whisky byproduct” was written by Mark Tran, for theguardian.com on Wednesday 25th December 2013 09.00 UTC

A project to remove arsenic from groundwater in Bangladesh began by accident, when Dr Leigh Cassidy from Aberdeen University was working on technology to treat industrially contaminated water in the UK.

Cassidy, who was working on her Phd, thought draff, the residue of barley husks that is a byproduct of using grain in brewing alcohol products such as whisky, would act as a cleansing agent. The idea was brusquely dismissed by one colleague.

“I was told ‘don’t be stupid it will never work’,” Cassidy says. “But someone else said to go ahead.”

Cassidy did indeed go ahead, modifying the draff with a secret ingredient, transforming it into a cleansing agent. She is now credited as the inventor of the appropriately named Dram – she admits to trying to think of a clever name. Dram is short for device for the remediation and attenuation of multiple pollutants. Instead of using draff in Bangladesh, Dram will use local ingredients such as coconut shells or rice husks to act as the organic filter media that traps the arsenic.

The arsenic crisis in Bangladesh is considered by the World Health Organisation to be the largest mass poisoning of a population in human history. About 77 million people are at risk of arsenic poisoning despite the hundreds of millions of dollars spent in addressing the problem. One in five deaths in Bangladesh are due to arsenic poisoning.

Dram works using a stainless steel unit connected to contaminatedwater in a tubewell. The water is pumped into the bottom of the unit where it rises up through a bed of the organic filter media, binding the arsenic. Clean water is displaced and forced out of the top of the unit and through the built-in tap.

PurifAid, a Canadian social enterprise based in Toronto, Canada, founded by Shahreen Reza, who is of Bangladeshi origin, is working with Brac, the Bangladeshi NGO, to deploy Dram in Bangladesh. PurifAid is using a $100,000 (£60,000) award from Grand Challenges Canada to start the project in Bangladesh as soon as the political situation calms down. Tension is high in the country before the scheduled January elections.

Reza had been thinking of a water purification scheme for Bangladesh ever since she was a student at the prestigious Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris in 2010 and found out about Dram on the web. She is drawn to the device because of its simplicity and requires no change in behaviour from villagers.

“The water is decontaminated at a rate of 1,000 litres an hour, which is at industrial levels,” Reza says. “The filter, which must be replaced every four to six months, can be used as biofuel and the units only need a simple cleaning every four to five months.”

PurifAid plans to use a franchise business model for Dram. Local villagers will filter and deliver purified water, perform maintenance, acquire new filters, and dispose the used ones. Dram’s designers say it removes 95% of arsenic from contaminated water within five minutes of exposure and claim it is cheaper to manufacture than existing alternatives such as the Sono Filter, the market leader, which sells for about $40.

No price has been decided yet for Dram, but it is expected to cost about $10. Villagers are expected to invest collectively to purchase, install and operate Dram on existing tube wells.

 

[kalu_miah]

Stanford researchers track a silent killer in rural Bangladesh

Stanford Report, January 3, 2014
Stanford researchers track a silent killer in rural Bangladesh
An interdisciplinary team of Stanford researchers seek to understand why lead contamination persists in one of the poorest corners of the world, and how to stop its spread.

BY ROB JORDAN

Mohammed Saiful Islam
Researcher interviewing a farmer about frequency of pesticide use on eggplants.

It's been decades since the U.S. phased out the use of lead in gasoline, paint, pipes and other products because of the metal's insidious health effects. Although lead from previous years' exhaust still persists in soil and dust, Americans have largely rid themselves of the toxin, linked to symptoms ranging from anemia and hearing loss to heart disease and mental retardation. In other parts of the world, however, the specter of lead poisoning still hovers.

An interdisciplinary team of researchers supported by the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment's Environmental Venture Projects (EVP) seed-grant program is challenging conventional wisdom about why lead contamination lingers in one of the poorest corners of the world. Their work could lead to more rapid testing for contamination, greater public awareness and decisive regulatory action.

In some areas of Bangladesh, as many as half of the residents have high levels of lead in their blood. "If you had children or pregnant women in the U.S. with these levels, there would be an uproar," said Stephen Luby, a Stanford professor of medicine and senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

With his fellow project investigators, Luby is searching for the dangerous metal's pathways to people and ways to disrupt the status quo.

Decades of research
Luby first started thinking about lead in the developing world when he conducted a study in Pakistan during the early 1990s. The results showed high levels of lead in children's blood, likely a result of the country's continued use of leaded fuel.

After Pakistan banned leaded gas, due in part to the study's influence, Luby shifted his focus to nearby Bangladesh. He came across studies showing lead contamination in the land of two rural areas. "That struck me as odd," Luby recalls. There were few roads and almost no vehicles spewing leaded gas exhaust in the areas. Based on the evidence of higher lead levels in farm land compared with levels in nearby homes, Luby speculated that the contamination was coming from an agricultural product, possibly pesticide, and being absorbed by plants.

A similar story played out in the U.S. apple industry during the late 19th century and early 20th century when the use of lead arsenate pesticides contributed to the contamination of thousands of acres and sickened many field workers.

When he floated his hypothesis to other experts in the field, Luby was met with skepticism. Responding to an email from Luby, one wrote that he was "perplexed" by the idea, while another scientist wrote he "would be very surprised" if Luby's theory proved correct. "They thought I was crazy," Luby said. "It was pretty direct and troubling because it came from people who have been in Bangladesh a long time."

Despite the doubts, Luby pushed on. With colleagues, he collected hundreds of blood samples from residents of agricultural areas. Luby didn't have the funding, however, to test the samples for lead, carry out surveys and do other related work. "Then EVP came along," Luby said. With the program's support, Luby and his fellow project investigators, Assistant Professor of Economics Pascaline Dupas and Woods senior fellows Scott Fendorf (Earth sciences) and Roz Naylor (Earth sciences, FSI), plan to look for lead in blood and soil samples, examine evidence of past contamination and develop ways to test pesticides for the dangerous metal.

Interdisciplinary team of researchers
Naylor's interest in the project was driven by a desire to learn more about Bangladesh's agriculture sector, and how the use of lead-based pesticides potentially acts as a barrier to escaping poverty. "How can a country hope to alleviate rural poverty if people in those areas are cognitively impaired (from lead poisoning)?" Naylor said.

Fendorf, a soil scientist, will focus on how to find lead in soils and how to analyze it. Naylor, an agricultural economist and director of the Center for Food Security and the Environment, will examine market mechanisms for use and overuse of pesticides, among other analyses. Dupas, a developmental economist and center fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy

Research, will explore behaviors around pesticide use and how to change them. "They will frame issues and ask questions in ways that I wouldn't know to do," Luby said of his colleagues on the project.

Initial testing of samples has confirmed high levels of lead among residents of rural Bangladesh who have very little access to motor vehicles.

Luby hopes that once the pathway of lead contamination is confirmed, future lead identification data in Bangladesh will be published by watchdog groups and garner widespread attention. "We are set up to be able to demonstrate how these rural residents become exposed to such high levels of lead," Luby said. He acknowledges, however, that it may require more to get the attention of powerful decision makers. "If rice for city people is also contaminated, we will have the attention of the political class."