Dwaipayan Barua

The Chittagong port may post a negative growth in container throughput in 2022 compared to a year earlier due to the decline in container handling for the slowdown in Bangladesh’s international trade.

The finance division has strictly asked ministries and divisions not to demand any additional money beyond the amount allocated this year.

The eight fast track projects being implemented by the government are seeing mixed progress with four having made significant progress as of November this year while the rest may not see timely completion.

Though inflation continued to undergo a downward trend for a third consecutive month in November, non-food inflation in rural areas entered into double digits last month for the first time in recent times. 

Water transport workers have gone on a strike demanding a pay hike, suspending unloading of imported goods at the Chattogram port’s outer anchorage and their subsequent transportation across the country since the early hours of yesterday.

Business leaders in Bangladesh hope the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Tunnel, being built beneath Karnaphuli river in Chattogram, will help expand the port city on both sides of the waterway as per the “One City, Two Towns” concept derived from China’s Shanghai.

Chittagong Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCCI) President Mahbubul Alam said the country’s first underwater tunnel below the Karnaphuli river will bring a new dimension to connectivity between the southeastern region and the rest of the country.

Water-vessel workers are set to observe an indefinite, countrywide work abstention from the end of this month to press home their demand for hiking minimum wage.

Movement of import and export-laden containers through the Chattogram port in October was lower both year-on-year and compared to that in the previous two months, reflecting a gradual slowdown in foreign trade amidst global economic downtrends. 

The plan to construct metro rail in Chattogram has taken a step forward, as the government is set to approve a project to carry out preliminary feasibility study for the infrastructure.

The coast of Mirsharai, an upazila in the southeast division of Chattogram, wakes up in the morning to the sounds of under-construction factories, and machines of several newly-built plants on a vast part of the region.

Bangladesh’s steel industry is set to see the entry of a couple of large business houses while several existing steelworks are looking to expand their capacities in order to gain from the rising demand for the key construction material.

The privately-owned BM Container Depot yesterday resumed handling export cargoes, albeit on a limited scale, after receiving permission from the customs authority to handle only garment shipments for the next three months.

The steel manufacturing plants in Bangladesh are less polluting and the lowest carbon emitters compared to the largest producers globally, mainly for the melting process followed locally and the efficient consumption of energy and water, said a top industrialist.  

Privately owned BM Container Depot resumed handling export cargoes on a limited scale today after over four and a half months of the fatal explosion at the depot on June 4 that left 51 people dead.

Import and export of containerised cargo through the country’s premier seaport in Chattogram fell in the first quarter of the current fiscal year compared to that last year, indicating a slowdown in foreign trade resulting from global economic downtrends. 

The revenue collection growth decelerated to 12.63 per cent in Bangladesh in the first quarter of the current fiscal year, driven by the cost-of-living crisis at home and abroad, narrowing the fiscal space for the government, official figures showed.  

The government should allow freight forwarders to set up and run bonded warehouse facilities with a view to handling export and import cargoes smoothly, said Bangladesh Freight Forwarders Association (BAFFA) Vice President Khairul Alam Suzan. 

The International Monetary Fund has cut Bangladesh’s growth forecast to 6 percent for fiscal year 2022-2023.

The Tk 10,460 crore Ghorashal Palash Urea Fertiliser Factory project, taken up four years ago, is likely to cost 48 percent more and take two more years to be completed.