Bangladesh Government News

The Bangladesh Government has confirmed that it will ratify the Hong Kong International Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships in the next few weeks, allowing for the Convention to enter into force.BIMCO’s Secretary General and CEO, David Loosley visited Bangladesh as part of an industry delegation to discuss the benefits of the Convention entering into force. “BIMCO is delighted that Bangladesh has confirmed their commitment to ratifying the Convention in the very near future.

On Tuesday, July 11, Damen hosted a dredging seminar in Dhaka, Bangladesh attended by more than 100 representatives from the Dutch Embassy in Bangladesh, experts from the Bangladesh Government, the Bangladesh Navy, local financing institutions, various customers of Damen and other industry stakeholders. Damen said it has enjoyed great successes all over the world in the sale of its dredging equipment, including Trailing Suction Hopper Dredgers, Cutter Suction Dredgers and renowned DOP pumps.

If the Bangladesh government shows more vision and ambition in helping remove constraints on local shipbuilders, investments will pour in, say industry observers. The EU Ambassador in Dhaka has said that the European Union is looking to invest in the Bangladeshi shipbuilding industry. German shipping companies have also expressed interest in buying more vessels from Bangladeshi shipyards. A report in Dhaka Tribune said that Bangladeshi entrepreneurs have invested in improving facilities and developing skills to enhance the nation’s capacity to build modern ships. The country needs such emerging manufacturing sectors to grow in order to help diversify and expand the economy. The government must make more use of the levers it has available to encourage the nation’s shipbuilding industry.

The Bangladesh government has decided to allow vessels to ply through the Shela River in the Sundarbans, defying the recommendations of the UN experts and environmentalists. The decision came from an inter-ministerial meeting at the shipping ministry Tuesday with Shipping Minister Shajahan Khan in the chair, apparently in the face of pressure from river transport workers. The river was made off limits to shipping after a tanker capsized in the water streaming through the Sundarbans on December 9, spilling 3.58 lakh liters of crude oil into the world's largest mangrove forest and threatening its unique biodiversity. Carrying 357,664 l of furnace oil, the tanker ‘OT Southern Star 7’ went down after being hit by another vessel on the Shela at Mrigmari in the Sundarbans Chandpai range.

Authorities on India's eastern coast are on alert after a tanker and another vessel collided, spilling more than 350,000 litres of furnace oil into the waters of the Sundarban tidal mangrove forests in neighbouring Bangladesh. "We are taking all precautionary measures," Pradeep Vyas, additional director of India's Sundarban Biosphere Reserve, told Reuters on Friday. The Indian Coast Guard and Border Security Force are both monitoring the situation, and boats are patrolling the rivers that connect the Sundarban region, which straddles the border between India and Bangladesh, he said. On Tuesday, an oil tanker carrying 358,000 litres of furnace oil and another vehicle crashed together.

Bangladesh was hit on Saturday by a major power outage that brought much of normal life to a standstill, forced hospitals and garment factories to rely on back-up generators and even plunged the prime minister's official residence into darkness. "The national grid collapsed so the whole country lost power," said Mohammad Saiful Islam, a director of state-run Bangladesh Power Development Board. Poor and densely populated, Bangladesh struggles to provide power supplies to its 160 million people and its industries, including garment manufacturers, whose output account for 80 percent of the south Asian nation's exports. Anwarul Alam Chowdhury…

As part of a measure to resolve future gas crisis, the government of Bangladesh in October may announce the third round of block bidding for oil and gas exploration in the offshore and deep-sea areas of the Bay of Bengal. However, the government is reportedly also ready to open a number of on-shore blocks, especially in the western region of the country, in the same bidding. There is a court injunction on bidding of the on-shore blocks. The bidding will offer attractive gas price prospects, but it also withdraws zero corporate tax facilities for oil companies--a benefit that was offered in the previous bidding of blocks. The biggest…