Dhaka, Bangladesh (BBN)- The Bangladesh Business News (BBN) has prepared the morning business round up compiling reports, published by different newspapers and news portals in Bangladesh.
Leather sector eyes $5b from exports: Bangladesh will be able to earn at least $5 billion in exports from leather, leather goods and footwear in the next decade if it can properly address health, environment and compliance issues in the sector, analysts said yesterday. “We have all the elements, such as cheap labour and raw materials to grab more orders,” Bazlul Haque Khondker, an economics professor at Dhaka University, said at a roundtable. But the country lacks environment friendly tanneries to process leather, posing as the main bottleneck to increasing exports, he said. “So, it is an urgent requirement to start relocation of hazardous tanneries from Hazaribagh to Savar.”
National inspection policy being drafted: The government is working to formulate a national inspection policy aiming at bringing all the industrial sectors under a regulatory system and establish a comprehensive database including outcomes of assessments, sources said. The Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments (DIFE), in collaboration with the International Labour Organisation (ILO), is preparing a draft in this regard, they added.
Banks go for long-term funding with call money market loans:Some banks are investing in long-term government securities by receiving short-term loans from the call money and Repo markets in a bid to earn high profit, violating banking ethics, according to Bangladesh Bank inspection reports. BB officials said the banks received loans from the call money market with interest rate of 5.50 per cent to 7 per cent in recent months and they invested the fund in the long-term government securities with interest rate of 8.67 per cent to 12.14 per cent.
Consumer inflation up slightly in Mar: Consumer inflation rose slightly to 7.48 per cent in March, on the back of higher rate of food inflation, according to official statistics released Sunday. The rate of inflation measured on the consumer price index (CPI) surged by 0.04 percentage point last month (March) over its previous month. The point-to-point food inflation stood at 8.96 per cent in March, which was 8.84 per cent in February.
BB enhances private travel quota by 71.43%: The central bank has enhanced global private travel entitlement by 71.43 percent to US$12000 from $7000 earlier to facilitate tourism, officials said. Under the relaxation, the authorised dealer banks, officially known as ADs, may release foreign exchange up to US$5000 or equivalent per person from $2000 earlier during a calendar year to Bangladesh nationals proceeding by air or overland to destinations in SAARC member countries and Myanmar.
Govt unlikely to meet target: The government is unlikely to meet the target to reduce system loss in power distribution to a single digit by the 2015 financial year as the work in this direction is progressing slow, officials said. The officials said that the government’s policy to increase power supply without increasing distribution capacity was the main obstacle to achieving the target.The government increased power supply by 62 per cent in five years but it increased distribution capacity by 11 per cent, according to government data.
Foreign funds surge in Dhaka stocks: Net foreign investment in Dhaka stocks rose 69 percent year-on-year in the first quarter this year.
Overseas investors bought shares worth Tk 935.47 crore and sold stocks worth Tk 439.10 crore, taking their net investment to Tk 496.37 crore at the end of March, according to data from Dhaka Stock Exchange. The net foreign investment in the first quarter of 2013 was Tk 293.03 crore, after foreign investors bought shares worth Tk 440.33 crore and sold shares worth Tk 147.30 crore during the period.
BB raises export dev fund allocation to $ 1.2b: The central bank has increased the allocation for the export development fund (EDF) by 20 per cent to US$ 1.2 billion from $ 1.0 billion to meet the growing demand from the country's exporters. "We've enhanced the allocation for the EDF scheme to help the country's exporters gear up their business activities," a senior official of the Bangladesh Bank (BB) told the FE Sunday.
BBN/SSR/AD-07Apr14-8:50 am (BST)