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FBCCI and ICC discuss strengthening trade ties
The Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI) and the Indian Chamber of Commerce (ICC) held a B2B (Business to Business) meeting on Monday.
The meeting was held with a business delegation of 43 members of the ICC visiting Bangladesh at the FBCCI office in the capital.
Also read: Mahbubul Alam of Chattogram Chamber new FBCCI president
FBCCI Senior Vice President Mostafa Azad Chowdhury Babu presided over the meeting. The ICC delegation was led by its Director General Rajiv Singh. The meeting discussed the strengthening of commercial relations between the two countries, a press release said.
General inflation virtually unchanged at 9.69 percent in July
The general inflation remained virtually unchanged at 9.69 percent on a point-to-point basis for the month of July, having been 9.74 percent in June, said the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS).
The inflation in Bangladesh saw a slow pace in decrease while the inflation of many South Asian countries is decreasing steadily. Economists said inadequate steps of the government failed to rein in inflation.
Read: Bangladesh Bank raises agro credit target to Tk 35000 cr in FY23-24; rooftop gardeners will also get farm loans
The country’s general inflation was 7.48 percent in July 2022, which jumped to 9.69 percent in July 2023. In May 2023 the inflation jumped to a decade-high 9.94 percent.
General non-food inflation dropped to 9.47 percent in July, down from 9.60 percent in June. However, food inflation experienced an increase to 9.76 percent in July, compared to 9.73 percent in June.
The general inflation in the rural areas decreased to 9.75 percent in July from 9.82 percent in June.
Read: Despite tightening imports, Bangladesh faces a deficit of $8.22 billion in foreign transaction
In urban areas, the general inflation has decreased to 9.43 percent from 9.45 percent in June.
Two independent sets of commodities (goods & services) are used to compute the Consumer Price Index for rural and urban areas. The rural and urban baskets cover 383 items with 749 varieties of goods and services. This index has been rebased with 2021-22 as the reference index.
Read: Bangladesh earned $4.59 billion from export in July
The CPI items for the national and sub-national indices are classified into 12 major categories such as food and nonalcoholic beverages, alcoholic beverages, tobacco and narcotics, clothing and footwear, housing, water, electricity, gas, and other fuels, furnishings, household equipment, and routine maintenance of the house, health, transportation, communication, recreation and culture, education, restaurants and hotels and miscellaneous goods and services.
Bangladesh Bank raises agro credit target to Tk 35000 cr in FY23-24; rooftop gardeners will also get farm loans
Bangladesh Bank on Sunday announced a new agricultural credit disbursement policy with the target of disbursing Tk 35,000 crore loan to ensure food security in the country.
The central bank’s new target is 13.60 percent higher than that of the fiscal year 2022-23 which was Tk 30,811 crore.
Under the policy, people who have rooftop gardens may apply for farm loans, creating a new scope for urban farming.
AKM Sajedur Rahman Khan, Deputy Governor of the central bank, announced the agriculture and rural credit policy as the chief guest at the central bank headquarters in Motijheel. Kaniz Fatema, Director of the Agriculture Credit Department (ACD), and other senior officials were present.
Considering the demand for agricultural and rural loans, state-owned commercial and specialized banks were given a target to disburse Tk 12,030 crore, private commercial banks Tk 21,923 crore, and foreign banks’ branches in Bangladesh Tk 1047 crore in agricultural loans.
In FY 2022-23, banks disbursed a total of Tk 32830 crore in agricultural and rural loans, which was 106.55 percent higher than the total target of the financial year.
In the last fiscal year, a total of 36.18 lakh farmers received agricultural and rural loans, of which 18.81 lakh women received loans of about Tk 12,752.46 crore from banks and Micro Financial Institutes (MFIs) or NGOs.
The agriculture credit policy focuses food security in the country in the changing global situation.
Apart from the target of commercial banks, Bangladesh Sambay Bank Limited and Bangladesh Rural Development Board (BRDB) were given a target to disburse Tk 26 crore and Tk 1,423 crore respectively as agricultural and rural credit.
Banks will use their own networks (branches, sub-branches, agent banking, contract farming, syndicated loan disbursements) and bank-MFI linkages to achieve credit disbursement targets.
In this case, the amount of loans distributed through the banks’ own network should be at least 50 percent of the target. Earlier it was 30 percent.
Despite tightening imports, Bangladesh faces a deficit of $8.22 billion in foreign transaction
Despite tightening imports in the fiscal year 2022-23, Bangladesh faced an overall foreign transaction deficit of $8.22 billion, which was $6.65 billion in FY22, said a latest report of Bangladesh Bank (BB).
The Bangladesh Bank's balance of payment of foreign currency transactions revealed the information on Thursday.
The report said that in the recent past FY23(July-June) Bangladesh imported goods worth $69.49 billion. During this period $52.34 billion worth of products were exported.
Also read: Bangladesh Bank working to normalise inflation and dollar crisis despite geopolitical challenges
Due to this, Bangladesh has a trade deficit of $17.15 billion. In FY23, imports decreased by 15.76 percent, while exports increased by 6.28 percent.
The concerned BB officials said that imports are more than exports, the prices of all kinds of products including energy on the rise in the world market. The remittances and exports are not as expected, foreign investment is decreasing, in this effect, Bangladesh is falling into a trade deficit in external trade.
The trade deficit of FY23 created a large gap in the overall trade balance. This deficit is over $8.22 billion.
An increase in the deficit in the overall current account means the amount of foreign exchange coming into the country from various sources is greater than what is being paid out. In this, the central bank has to sell dollars from foreign exchange reserves.
Also read: Bangladesh’s foreign exchange reserves now $23.57 billion as per IMF formula
Bangladesh Bank sold $13.5 billion in FY23. The BB also sold $7.62 billion in the previous FY22. Thus, the foreign exchange reserves are continuously decreasing due to the sale of dollars. The reserves stood at $30.84 billion as of June 25.
The foreign direct investment (FDI) decreased by 2.87 percent to $4.50 billion in FY23 that was $4.63 billion in the FY22.
Bangladesh received remittances of $21.61 billion in the FY23 that was $21.03 billion in the FY22.
The country faced the foreign exchange deficit due to higher import than export, slowdown of remittances and FDI flow, said BB officials.
Also read: Forex reserves likely to increase due to govt steps: PM Hasina tells Parliament
BGMEA President for nurturing young and innovative people to achieve industry’s vision
BGMEA President Faruque Hassan has underscored the need for designing the course curriculum of the universities in Bangladesh in alignment with the present and future needs of the industries.
He said, “There is a huge gap between the skills produced by our educational institutes and the demand by the industries. The industry – academia linkage is important because our growth depends on our ability to move to diversified products which require complex skills.”
"The linkage has to be drawn by changing the conventional way of education where we need to integrate more practical education," he added.
Faruque Hassan made the remarks while addressing the opening of the Textile Talent Hunt (TTH)’s 8th season as chief guest.
Prof. Dr. Shah Alimuzzaman, Vice Chancellor, Bangladesh University of Textiles, Mohammad Ali Khokon, President, Bangladesh Textile Mills Association (BTMA), and Engr. Md. Shafiqur Rahman, President, Institution of Textile Engineers and Technologists, was present as special guests at the program held in Dhaka on August 2.
Textile Talent Hunt, an initiative of Textile Today Innovation Hub, is a talent grooming competition for the undergrad students studying in textile, garments, fashion and any discipline. The TTH aims to prepare future leaders in the garment and textile industry by training, grooming and mentoring to adopt latest developments through innovation projects in a modern approach.
In his speech, BGMEA President Faruque Hassan said, “The fashion industry is undergoing a paradigm shift mostly driven by technology and digitization. Innovations and technologies are changing the way we experience fashion, the way the industry operates and also bringing new processes in production to make fashion more sustainable.”
“In order to keep pace with the global trend, we need to adopt a sustainable and innovative business model. For that, we need capable human resources,” he remarked.
As the RMG industry of Bangladesh aims to achieve a 100 billion dollars export target by 2030, we have to nurture young, creative and experienced minds to enable them to take the leadership, he said.
The Textile Talent Hunt program will play an active role to bring fresh ideas, embrace technology, address sustainability concerns, and cater to evolving consumer needs in the global market,” he added.
Textile Talent Hunt 8.0 launches to foster innovation in textile, garment industries
Textile Today Innovation Hub organized a launching ceremony of Textile Talent Hunt (TTH) 2023-24 competition at a hotel in Dhaka on Wednesday.
Faruque Hassan, president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), was the chief guest at the event.
Mohammad Ali Khokon, president of Bangladesh Textile Mills Association (BTMA), and Engr Md Shafiqur Rahman, president of Institution of Textile Engineers and Technologists (ITET) attended as special guests.
"I thank the organizer for successfully launching the 8th season. In the 21st century, innovation and sustainability are no longer optional issues. Now, it is a necessity as the industry is continuously evolving with innovative products. To keep pace with this, Bangladesh’s textile and apparel industry must adopt innovation to optimise processes," said Faruque.
"Therefore, taking initiatives like the Textile Talent Hunt (TTH) 2023–24 competition by the Textile Today Innovation Hub is absolutely paramount to foster innovative processes, and for that, we need to develop innovative minds and leaders who will serve the textile and apparel industry in the long run," he added.
The launching programme was chaired by BUTEX Vice Chancellor Dr Shah Alimuzzaman Belal and moderated by Tareq Amin, founder and CEO of Textile Today Innovation Hub.
"I believe Textile Talent Hunt (TTH) 2023–24, like always, will uplift innovativeness in all over the industry by creating future leaders and by solving current challenges of the industry through innovativeness. BUTEX will provide all the support the event needs," said Alimuzzaman.
"Bangladesh’s apparel export industry wants to achieve $100 billion in exports by 2030. And as the BTMA president, I am really proud that we have a very strong backward linkage in the textile sector to support our apparel sector, said Khokon.
This time TTH is looking for students to transform them into Innovation Masterminds (IM) through training and grooming, idea audition, aptitude test, and supervised research or innovation project execution.
About 2,000 students are expected to join the competition from universities all around the country. Around 100 will be selected from them for the national-level competition to transform them into IMs.
"Textile Talent Hunt in its previous season was affluent to get right talents for the industry and in the 8th season we will put our best effort to discover right talents which will help them to be Innovation Masterminds for the sector," said Tareq Amin.
Title sponsor of the TTH 8th Season is Centro Tex Ltd, which is powered by Archroma (Bangladesh) Ltd.; Platinum Sponsors are Dysin Group and Jay Chemical Industries Pvt Ltd; Sponsors are Sameet Dye Chem and Sota Ghar Colour House; and Quality Partner is SGS Bangladesh Ltd.
FBCCI election: 15 new directors from Combined, 8 from Oikya panels elected
The Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI), the apex trade body, has elected 23 new directors to serve on its board for the 2023-25 term.
Two panels contested the election - Combined and Oikya. The former enjoyed better results in the end, sweeping 15 of the 23 spots being contested. Oikya Panel had to be satisfied with the remaining 8.
Of the 80 Board of Directors of FBCCI, the vote was held for 23 directors' posts.
Also read: FBCCI election held peacefully
The elected candidates from the Combined panel are Hafiz Haji Mohammad Enayet Ullah (1294 votes), BM Shoaib (1279), Mir Nizam Uddin Ahmed (1257), Sirajul Islam (1246), Sahidul Haque (1215), Nizam Uddin Rajesh (1191), Muntakim Ashraf (1175), Rakibul Alam Dipu (992), Mohammad Aftab Javed (966), Ishakul Hossain Sweet (891), Amir Hossain Noorani (852), Syed Md. Bakhtiar (840), Tapan Kumar Majumder (835), Salma Hossain Ash (831) and Haji Abul Hashem (815).
From Oikya panel, the new directors are Kawsar Ahmed (1030 votes), Khandkar Ruhul Amin (988) among the elected members of the Trade Union Council, Md. Amin Helali (911), Niaz Ali Chishti (909), Abu Motaleb (899), Shami Kaiser (852), Rashedul Hossain Chowdhury Roni (837) and Hafez Harun (813).
Also read: Immense opportunities remain to strengthen bilateral trade with India: FBCCI President
The election saw impressive turnout, knocking at almost 90 percent with 1746 votes cast out of 1954 eligible voters on Monday.
Elections for the posts of FBCCI President, Senior Vice-President, and six Vice-Presidents will be held tomorrow (August 2) by the new board of directors.
Also read: Policy support needed in budget for import-alternative industry in Bangladesh: FBCCI President tells ERF discussion
AMANN Group delegation meets BGMEA President
A delegation of AMANN Group led by Florian Seiberlich, Director Global Marketing, AMANN Group together with ColorDigital, represented by Kai Timpe, General Manager Sales called on BGMEA President Faruque Hassan on July 30.
Md. Shahidullah Azim, vice president of BGMEA, Md. Rokonuzzaman, managing director of AMANN (Bangladesh), Arshad Hassan, business development director, AMANN Group and Ehsanul Huq, commercial director, AMANN Bangladesh were also present at the meeting.
Since 1854, AMANN Group has been one of the leading international manufacturers of high-quality sewing threads, embroidery threads, and Smart Yarns. From universal sewing threads to highly technical special yarn, AMANN offers a wide range of various applications.
They discussed various issues related to the RMG industry, including the present situation of the sector, global market demand and trends, and current challenges and opportunities.
Highlighting the industry’s increased focus on product diversification to secure sustainable growth, BGMEA President Faruque Hassan said that Bangladeshi garment factories were opting for value-added products while investing in technology upgradation to enhance efficiency and productivity.
Md. Shahidullah Azim, Vice President of BGMEA, highlighted the present global apparel market and vision of Bangladesh’s RMG industry, as well as the current BGMEA activities and future projects.
He also showcased the BGMEA Innovation centre, library, medical and day care centre and others.
Md. Rokonuzzaman, Managing Director of Amann Bangladesh pointed out that “we always have plans at the AMANN Group, especially for Bangladesh, since this is one of the strongest growing markets.”
FBCCI election held peacefully
The election for the new board members of the FBCCI (2023-25) has been held peacefully. FBCCI Election Board Chairman A Matin Chowdhury said about 89 percent of the votes have been cast.
He told reporters this after the election of the board of directors of BFCCI. Around 1746 votes out of 1954 have been cast, and no fake voter is identified.
The election was held to elect 23 directors on Monday (July 31) at the Bangabandhu International Conference Center (BICC) in the capital.
The chairman of the Election Board said that the allegation of fake voting is not true. “We checked to confirm each voter's name and NID card before polling. Hence there is no possibility of fake votes,” he pointed out.
He said, “An order of the High Court came during the election. I stayed it and sent it to the Supreme Court. Keeping that in force, we conducted the election, according to the law.”
Out of the total 80 directors of the FBCCI Board of Directors, as per the constitution, 17 each from the Chamber and Association groups have already been nominated as a total of 34 directors.
Apart from this, there are 23 chamber group members and 23 posts from sector-based associations, but the candidates of the chamber group were elected unopposed as 23 nomination papers were submitted against the 23 posts of the chamber group.
49 candidates are contesting as candidates against 23 posts of sector-wise association groups. Out of this, 23 candidates are contesting as director candidates from the panel of trade unions, 23 from the combined trade union panel, and 3 are contesting as independent candidates.
This year held an election to maintain a formality as around 57 directors are already elected as unopposed. Earlier in two consecutive tenures no elections were held as the business leader select the board of directors and president of FBCCI in section by mutual understanding.
US-Bangla Airlines gets IOSA certificate
US-Bangla Airlines has become the first private carrier of the country to get the IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA).
Argus Pros, one of the five audit firms worldwide designated by IATA, acted as the auditor for US-Bangla Airlines to receive the IOSA certificate, reads a media release.
Read: HSIA launches Web Portal, call centre, CRM software for passengers
To receive the IOSA certificate, the airline had to take into consideration the progress of all the indicators of a total of eight disciplines. The indicators include—flight operations, cabin safety, dispatch, maintenance, ground handling, cargo operations, security and organisation.
Also, the airline had to consider SMS (Safety Management System) and QMS (Quality Management System).
Read: SAUDIA expands international flights incorporating Bangladeshi travelers
The IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) Programme is an internationally recognised and accepted evaluation system designed to assess the operational management and control systems of an airline.