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Country’s revenue board chief has opposed zero tariff facility and tax holiday incentive for businesses and industries.
   The chairman of the National Board of Revenue, Khairuzzaman Chowdhury, on Wednesday told business and chamber leaders at a pre-budget discussion that zero tariff facility and tax holiday incentive should go after passage of the next budget.
   ‘Zero-tariff facility should be eliminated,’ he said.
   ‘Tax holiday should be replaced by a good package as the incentive is set to draw an end on June 30.’
   ‘Nothing should be free,’ asserted the chairman at a meeting with business delegation led by FBCCI president Abdul Awal Mintoo.
   The chairman’s crucial comment came following a persistent appeal of the businesspeople for restructuring the current import duty slabs, which, they mentioned, made a comfortable room merely for imported finished goods and left the local industry in a moribund situation.
   The current budget slashed the highest slab of import duty from 30 per cent to 25 per cent with re-fixing duty slabs from four to three. Chamber leaders and industrialists expressed their utter dissatisfaction and frustration over the changes in the current budget after it was passed in the parliament.
   A New Age instant investigation revealed that pharmaceuticals, textiles, computer industry and agro-sector would be hit hard once the zero tariff facility is eliminated in the next budget.
   Currently, 519 items enjoy the facility, but the number of such items was 541 in the 2003-2004 fiscal.
   The items include live bovine animal, parent stock of one day chick, pona fish, bovine semen, different vegetable products, bulbs, tubes, roses, potatoes, cereals like barley, oats, maize (corn), paddy and different types of seeds.
   Besides, mustard, caster oil seeds and cotton seeds, different industrial waste, copper wares, precious metal ores, calcium hydrogen orthophosphate vitamin A to vitamin E also enjoy the similar facility.
   Different organic compounds, pharmaceutical products like glands, vaccines for humane medicine, insulin, fertiliser, scrap paper, newspaper, magazine, nylon, polyester fibre, synthetic fibre, fibre glass, different mechanical appliances, combing machines, textile spinning machines, carding machines and weaving fabrics are also entitled to zero tariff facility.
   Imports of photovoltaic generator, computer disk packs, parts and accessories of vehicles would bear the brunt of duty elimination, the business circle said.
   Dewan Sultan, a FBCCI director who was present at the discussion meeting, told New Age that serious negative impact would be loomed large in case of withdrawal of zero duty facility.
   As far as the tax holiday facility is concerned, the NBR officials believe that the incentive has long been misused.
   A recent NBR study says the accumulated revenue loss caused by awarding tax holiday facility to newly set up industrial entities from FY 2001-2002 to FY 2003-2004 stood at Tk 847 crore.
   The number of new industries set up in the country under the same tax facility during the last three fiscal years was 902, with investment totalling Tk 1400 crore.

Business leaders on Wednesday demanded continuation of the pre-shipment inspection system and tax holiday scheme to ensure hassle-free import and increase industrial growth.
   They also demanded harmonisation of the tax structure and urged the National Board of Revenue not to slash the highest slab of import duty further in the ensuing budget at the advice of multilateral lenders.
   Abdul Awal Mintoo, president of the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry, led a 20-member business delegation at the pre-budget discussion with the revenue authority. NBR chairman Khairuzzaman Chowdhury, along with other high officials, was present at the meeting held at the board’s conference room.
   The apex trade body president stressed that tax structure needs to be harmonised to plug the system loopholes that cost businessmen a lot.
    Abdul Hafiz Chowdhury of the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, also a director of the FBCCI, said that PSI system should continue for ensuring hassle-free import.
   The Metropolitan chamber in its own budget proposals demanded a five-year extension of the PSI system and suggested that any misconduct by any PSI company or customs official must be looked into to make the system more effective and flawless.
   Manzur Ahmed, former director of the Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said customs officials do not accept the valuation report (CRF report) of the PSI agency, which they are bound to accept.
   Criticising the government for lowering the highest import duty in every budget, he said the government has been serving the purposes of the World Bank while slashing the duty drastically.
   ‘Local industry has long been bearing the burnt of duty slash,’ Manzur told the meeting.
   KMA Shahidul Hoque, a director of Dhaka Chamber, urged the NBR to formulate new tax policy for women entrepreneurs and elderly people aged above 60.
   Dewan Sultan Ahmed, an FBCCI director, urged the board administration to bring more wealthy people into tax dragnet to widen the revenue base and ensure social justice.
   He demanded continuation tax holiday scheme for the betterment of the local industrialists.
   Mahbubur Rahman, president of the International Chamber of Commerce, Bangladesh demanded reduction in corporate tax on the financial institutions and continuation of the tax holiday and the PSI system.
   ‘Any misuse of tax holiday and PSI system should be addressed instead of scrapping the both. You can not cut off your head to get rid of headache,’ the senior business leader said.

Garment entrepreneurs of Bangladesh and Nepal, on behalf of 14 least developed countries (LDCs), have taken initiatives to convene a minister-level meeting in Dhaka in May to collectively push for a new bill in the United States that, once passed, allows duty free access of garments in the US market.
   Kiran Saakha, President of Garment Association Nepal (GAN) told BDNEWS that the summit has been scheduled for May 9-11. “The main objective of the summit is to put pressure on the US to pass this law so that our part of the world is greatly benefited,” he said.
   The bill — Trade Act 2005 — was first tabled in the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives and the Finance Committee of the Senate in January 2005. The senate is yet to discuss the bill, but the Ways and Means Committee forwarded it to Trade Committee on March 3 seeking the latter’s suggestions.
   Once the bill is passed, garments being exported to the US from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Nepal, Laos and the Maldives, among other LDCs, will be 30 percent cheaper. Among them, Bangladesh is the largest exporter of garments to the US, while Cambodia ranks the second and Nepal third.
   Other LDCs being deprived of the duty free access are East Timor, Vanuatu, Afghanistan, Solomon Islands, Yemen, Kiribati, Samoa, Bhutan and Tuvalu.
   Saakha said technical teams will finalise the major issues to be discussed in the Dhaka meeting “within a few days”.
   According to GAN, the export of apparel and textile to foreign countries declined by 48 percent this year, as compared to last year’s data, in Nepal. “This is mainly because of the unfavourable political situation in Nepal due to the (Maoist) insurgency,” he lamented. “Though it has also declined in other countries, it’s not that miserable like ours.”
   Saakha is hopeful that, after the Dhaka meeting, respective governments will apply efforts through political and diplomatic channels to ensure that the bill is passed.

A 25-member delegation from Bangladesh Plastic Goods Manufacturers Association will join the international trade fair for plastics and rubber beginning in Singapore on April 26.
   Messe Dusseldorf Asia Pte Limited will organise the four-day long international plastics and rubber fair, Aseanplas 2005, at the Singapore Expo Hall.
   A total of 350 world leading plastic companies from 22 countries including Austria, China, Germany, India, Italy and Singapore will participate in the fair with their latest technology and wide range of plastic goods.
   The Bangladeshi team will be headed by the president of BPGMA, Md Jasim Uddin said Meherun N Islam, managing director of conference and exhibition management services (CEMS) at a press conference held at Sonargaon Hotel on Wednesday.
   Delegates from all over the world related with plastics business will get up-to-date information about innovated plastic and rubber machinery, equipment, products and services that will help them to capture the markets, said, Shahid S. Sarwar, director of conference and exhibition management services.
   The Bangladeshi team will participate also in a conference during the fair, which will focus on advanced technologies.

Pakistani rice prices came under pressure over the past week because of a lack of export orders, which were unlikely to pick up soon, dealers said Tuesday.
   Abdul Majeed, a Karachi-based exporter, said he did not expect major exports of rice before May and June, when importers in traditional markets in Africa were set to run out of stocks.
   ‘The stocks in our traditional markets are high at the moment, which will start depleting by May and after that we may get some orders,’ he said.
   Majeed said buying by exporters has also been slow because of tough competition from Vietnam and Thailand, which had been offering rice at $242 a tonne, compared with $244-$246 in Pakistan.
   ‘Most of the international merchants are diverting to Vietnam and Thailand...they are picking up a lot of quantity from there.’
   The rupee’s rise against the dollar and high shipping costs were also making Pakistani rice exports less competitive, dealers said.
   A Lahore-based trader said exporters had made a few shipments to Africa but almost no exports to other major destinations.
   ‘Two ships are about to load around 52,000 tonnes of rice for Africa...after that no ship is scheduled for the next few weeks,’ the trader said.

Sayeed H Chowdhury has been re-elected chairman while Zahur Ullah and Asoke Das Gupta re-elected first vice-chairman and second vice-chairman respectively of the board of directors of ONE Bank Ltd, says a press release.
   Chowdhury has also been re-elected chairman of the bank's executive committee at the board meeting of the bank.
   A BSc (Honours) in Economics from London, Chowdhury joined the family business based in the Middle East in 1981. He joined the family company Karnaphuli Group as its director finance and planning in 1987.
   In 1991, Chowdhury founded the HRC Group. Export performance of HRC in tea sector has earned him CIP honour for nine consecutive years.
   He is the founder chairman and chief executive officer of HRC family of companies. Chowdhury is also the chairman of Media New Age Ltd and a director of Holiday Publications Limited.
   The first vice-chairman, Zahur UlIah, is the chairman of Apparel Fair (Pvt) Limited. He is involved in buying, manufacturing and exporting of readymade garments and allied products. He is also the managing director of Gtex Limited, Labels and Trims Limited, Everest Embroidery Limited and Lamisa Limited. He is one of the directors of Holiday Publications Limited.
   Asoke Das Gupta, second vice-chairman of the board of the bank, is the chief executive of IMTREX and managing director of Uniroyal Trade Limited and Business Capital Shares and Securities Ltd. He is also a member of the Dhaka and Chittagong stock exchanges.

Tele Barta Ltd has recently signed an interconnection agreement with mobile phone operator CityCell, says a press release.
   Chris Maloy, chief executive officer of CityCell and ANM Golam Sarwar, managing director of Tele Barta, signed the agreement on behalf of their respective companies.
   Siddique Ali Miah, director (engineering), Mahfuzur Rahman, senior vice-president (engineering), Ershad Ahmed, vice-president (engineering) of CityCell and Abu Sayeed, director (corporate affairs), Mahmud Hossain, chief technical officer, Masud Reza Bhuiyan, chief marketing officer and Monwar Hossain, manager (N. S. S.) of Tele Barta, were present at the signing ceremony.

A branch managers' conference of the Trust Bank Limited was held at Kurmitola Golf Club recently to review the yearly business performance of the bank.
   The chairman of the bank and chief of Army Staff, Bangladesh Army Lieutenant General Hasan Mashhud Chowdhury, inaugurated the conference as the chief guest while other members of the board of directors were present.
   The chairman called for more integrated efforts for achieving high level performance and sound growth of the bank.
   The inaugural session was addressed by Iqbal U Ahmed, managing director of the bank. Managers of 15 branches and senior executives of head office of the bank attended the conference, says a press release.

Lawmakers in the US Congress on Tuesday expressed support for a US government move that could lead to new limits on imports of Chinese textiles and clothing.
   Several members of Congress praised as long overdue a US Commerce Department-led investigation announced Monday into whether a recent surge of Chinese imports is hurting US producers.
   'When a country like China ... undercuts our markets, we should act aggressively to stop that,' Republican Senator Trent Lott told AFP.
   'If the Chinese are violating our trade laws, we should stick it to 'em anyway we can,' Lott said, who said possible counter-measures against Beijing could include quotas, tariffs or a World Trade Organization complaint.
   'What we've seen is what we pretty much expected-China has swamped the market, and it's having an adverse impact,' said Republican Senator Mike DeWine.
   'I think what the Commerce Department is trying to do is to give us some breathing room,' he said of the investigation. 'I think it makes some sense.'
   Quotas enshrined in the 1974 Multifiber Arrangement and later in the WTO Agreement on Textiles and Clothing ended on January 1, largely to the benefit of China, which is the world's largest exporter of clothing.
   China's textile industry, which enjoys 28 per cent share of the global market, can reach economies of scale allowing it to undercut producers with higher costs in Europe and the United States.
   The recent flood of inexpensive Chinese apparel and textiles affects not only industries in wealthy nations, but competing garment makers in developing countries which also are losing market share to China.
   Democratic Senator Chris Dodd said that despite his free market inclinations he is 'very much in favor' of restoring some quotas on China.
   'I think it's harmful for us not to do so,' he said, adding that the trade imbalance is worsened by current exchange rates.
   'I'm very concerned about the fact that they are fixing their exchange rate, the yuan. It's such a violation of free trade agreements.
   'This is just unacceptable that a country which is so determined to access our markets, when we have such a huge deficit in trade, would be allowed to fix currency rates,' Dodd told AFP.
   Commerce secretary Carlos Gutierrez said Monday that the review of the impact of textile and apparel imports from China is a 'first step in a process to determine whether the US market for these products is being disrupted.'
   The Committee for the Implementation of Textile Agreements (CITA), an interagency group chaired by the Commerce Department has initiated so-called safeguard proceedings on certain textile and apparel imports from China.
   The panel will receive input from the Departments of State, Labor, Treasury and the Office of the US Trade Representative. Officials expect to make their initial findings within 60 days.

State subsidies on oil products are doing great harm and barely any good in India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, the Asian Development Bank said Wednesday.
   Manila-based ADB urged its four member-countries, which are spending billions of dollars every year to keep local pump prices artificially low, to scale back subsidies and align prices with the market.
   ‘Current market conditions should be taken as an excellent reason to push through with reform, as the fiscal costs rise and as the escalation in the oil price may be more than just transitory,’ it said in its annual publication Asian Development Outlook.
   It acknowledged that "public resistance to removing subsidies can be very strong, particularly during times of volatile oil prices." It also took note of the fact that these countries have taken steps to reduce subsidies as the fiscal strain began to show.
   "Government intervention for redistributional and environmental reasons is justifiable only when the social gain or the environmental improvement exceeds the economic cost," the report said.
   ‘Nonetheless, the existing practices in these four countries appear ineffective since the subsidies are poorly targeted.’
   Moreover, ‘the distorted pricing encourages an excessive use of oil products, and the resulting deadweight costs can be substantial.’

Surging oil prices will shave between 0.25 and 0.5 percentage points off global economic growth this year, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund Rodrigo Rato said in a newspaper interview published Wednesday.
   ‘The high price of oil will cut growth of the global economy by at least 0.25-0.50 percentage points again this year,’ Rato told the business daily Handelsblatt.
   Oil prices surged to new records this week, topping a high of 58.28 dollars in New York on Monday, even if they have since eased from their highs in profit-taking.
   ‘We’ve revised upwards sharply our calculations for the annual average price of oil this year,’ Rato said.
   While in September the IMF had been pencilling in an average annual oil price of 37.30 dollars per barrel this year, it raised that forecast to 46.50 dollars in March. And now the price was expected to average around 51.90 dollars, Rato said.
   ‘High oil prices are increasingly becoming a downside risk’ to global growth, he warned.
   ‘The same can be said of the widening global current account deficits, the difference between growth and savings rates,’ the IMF chief continued.
   ‘The economies of Asia, China and the United States are dynamic, while Europe and Japan are lagging behind.’
   So far, the global economy had been able to absorb such imbalances ‘in an orderly fashion ... But if oil prices, inflation and currency movements trigger abrupt changes, the situation could deteriorate dramatically,’ Rato said.

The movement to sell a portion of IMF gold reserves to finance debt relief for poor nations hit a roadblock Tuesday as a key US lawmaker said Congress and the Bush administration would block any such move.
   Jim Saxton, chairman of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, said the move to sell off gold of the International Monetary Fund is opposed by US lawmakers as well as the administration of President George W. Bush.
   ‘The potential profits on IMF gold sales rightfully belong to the original donor countries and their taxpayers,’ Saxton said in a statement. ‘Thus, these IMF gold sales would amount to a hidden appropriation from the donor countries that were the original source of the gold.’
   Saxton, who said he supports other means for debt relief, said congressional approval would be required for any IMF gold sale.
   The movement to sell some part of IMF gold reserves, long backed by activists for debt relief, has gathered momentum recently.
   In London in February, finance ministers of the Group of Seven industrialized nations asked the IMF to draft a proposal on gold sales for debt relief to be presented at the spring meetings of the Fund and the World Bank in mid-April in Washington.

The Chinese are coming! Mainland Chinese product brands may still be largely unknown but executives say European and Asian consumers will soon be buying them as eagerly as they do Japanese or Korean products.
   While mainland products still suffer from consumers' perceptions of poor quality, Chinese corporations are gearing up to challenge more established rivals, determined to shed their shoddy image with innovation and competitive pricing.
   'Chinese companies and their brands are beginning to create visibility and perceptions with world audiences,' said Hayes Roth, vice president of worldwide marketing and business development at Landor Associates.
   A recent survey by Millward Brown found that 85 per cent of Chinese and Hong Kong companies were already selling products abroad while another 67 per cent of companies had a strategy in place to do so.
   'They are taking it very seriously,' said John Shaw, Asia planning director at Ogilvy. 'The Chinese are coming ... and it's a big wave that has only just begun.'
   One Chinese company long on the vanguard of building its brand reputation is Haier, the country's largest household appliance maker that began setting up manufacturing bases in the Philippines and Malaysia in 1996.
   Its strategies have since won the admiration of businessmen worldwide as the state-owned enterprise cracked tough foreign markets including in the United States with cheap but high-quality refrigerators.
   'It's not just about advertising,' said Elaine Reolfi, global brand director for Timken Company, a provider of bearings and mechanical parts to manufacturers such as Haier.
   Part of Haier's success is a result of strong product positioning built on the back of relationships with distributors and retailers, Reolfi said at a conference in Shanghai.
   There are others.
   Tsingtao carved out global distribution of its staple beer, while Lenovo is poised to gain a foothold in the West following its 1.75 billion-dollar purchase of IBM's laptop business last December.
   'Thinking big really reflects the plans and ambitions of Chinese companies,' said Edward Bell, China Planning director at Ogilvy.
   'But I don't think it's much different from Western companies,' added Bell, citing French cosmetic maker L'Oreal's aggressive moves in China that included back-to-back purchases more than a year ago of mainland brand Mininurse and Yue-Sai.
   However, the challenges of going head-to-head with multinational heavyweights like L'Oreal are not easy for Chinese companies that often do not have the financial muscle or the experience, said Huang Zhen, general manager of Shanghai Herborist Cosmetics.
   'Foreign brands, like L'Oreal, have been developed for a hundred years, while we've been under a planned economy and had no experience of marketing or branding at all,' Huang said.
   'But we are learning and accepting new things and we will definitely have the opportunity,' said Huang, adding that the six-year-old group's line of cosmetics had already won a toehold in Hong Kong, Japan, Italy, Russia and Ireland.
   For two decades, as China transformed from plodding central planning to a more market-based system, its cumbersome and uncompetitive state-enterprises took advantage of home court, which was both cheaper and less risky.
   But since China's accession to the World Trade Organization in late 2001 the economic landscape has changed.
   Heated foreign and domestic competition have forced mainland corporations to battle against thinning profit margins by seeking new markets, as occurred in televisions and is now happening in the auto industry.
   Yet provided Chinese corporations make good products that capitalise on their strong manufacturing technologies and cheap labor cost advantages, their products, especially tech brands, should fare well, said Bell.
   'Chinese companies will be able to provide quite good value,' said Bell.

Afghanistan won support from the World Bank and Britain Tuesday in its bid to have a bigger slice of the billions of dollars of aid money that flow into the country channelled through its own budget.
   Britain also offered to arrange an international donors’ conference on Afghanistan one day before a Group of Eight foreign ministers meeting it is also hosting in June.
   Afghan President Hamid Karzai has argued that large amounts of aid are wasted due to inefficiency or corruption among non- government organisations stepping outside their role as providers of humanitarian and development aid.
   The government, formed three months ago after Karzai’s election victory in October, is under pressure to show signs of economic progress in terms of infrastructure projects and jobs, even though it has little control over funding allocations.

US President George W Bush urged Congress Tuesday to quickly resolve their differences over the fiscal 2006 budget to show a commitment to reducing record deficits and growing the economy.
   Bush said he delivered a budget to Congress that would cut the deficit in half over five years, 'and now it's up to Congress.'
   'It's up to Congress to show the American people that we have the capacity to de-fund programmes which don't work, and fund programmes which do work,' Bush told reporters after meeting with members of his Cabinet.
   House of Representatives and Senate negotiators plan to begin meeting as early as this week to try to work out differences between their versions of the 2006 budget, which sets out broad spending parameters for the fiscal year beginning on October 1.

Reckitt Benckiser (Bangladesh) Ltd held its 44th annual general meeting in Dhaka on Tuesday. The company declared 35 per cent dividend for the shareholders, says a press release.
   The company achieved 20 per cent growth in net turnover to Tk 66.4 crore for 2004. The profit-after-tax grew by 50 per cent to Tk 3.8 crore.
   The growth is attributed to the strong sales of Reckitt's leading brands - Mortein, Harpic and Dettol.
   Significant increase in marketing investment and improvements in the sales and distribution network boosted the sales, the meeting was told.
   Colin Day, chief financial officer of the Reckitt Benckiser plc, presided over the annual meeting while Ata Safdar, managing director of the Reckitt Benckiser (Bangladesh) Ltd, assisted in the proceedings.
   The meeting was attended by a large number of shareholders of the company and Chander M Sethi, regional director for Reckitt Benckiser, South Asia, Rashid Umer Siddique, new finance director, and Ranjan Naik, finance director.

As per audited accounts as on December 31, 2004, the Phoenix Insurance has reported net profit of Tk 2.194 crore with EPS of Tk 33.17 as against Tk 1.849 crore and Tk 29.35 respectively as on December 31, 2003.
Beximco share transaction resumes today
Trading of the shares of the Beximco will resume today as announced earlier.
Fine Foods pre-tax profit down
As per un-audited half yearly accounts as on December 31, 2004, the Fine Foods has reported pre-tax profit of Tk 1.70 million with EPS of Tk 0.24 as against last year’s half yearly results of Tk 1.85 million and Tk 0.26 respectively.
Sponsors of Mercantile Bank to exchange shares
Md Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury, one of the sponsors of the Mercantile Bank, has reported his intention to sell 12,000 shares out of his holdings of 240,977 shares of the bank while Md. Selim, another sponsor of the bank, has reported his intention to buy 12,000 shares of the bank at prevailing market price through stock exchange within next 30 working days.
Sources : DSE, CSE

Sony signs up as
FIFA sponsor in
$305m deal
Sony Corporation has signed a 305 million dollar deal to become a sponsor of soccer’s world governing body FIFA from 2007 to 2014. The deal is the first global sponsorship agreement entered into by the Tokyo-based electronics, entertainment and technology group and they will join Adidas and Hyundai and three as yet unnamed companies as ‘FIFA partners’. One partner is chosen for a defined industry or business category and Sony will have some exclusive rights over ‘Digital Life’, which covers entertainment to electronics, Sony Corporation said in a statement. Under the terms of the deal, Sony will have ‘core sponsorship rights’ to all FIFA competitions over the seven years, most notably the World Cups of 2010, which will take place in South Africa, and 2014.
— Reuters

S Arabia could add 200b barrels
to its reserves
Oil giant Saudi Arabia might manage to add 200 billion barrels of crude reserves to its existing 261 billion barrels, which make up a quarter of the world’s total, Oil Minister Ali al-Nuaimi said Tuesday. ‘There is a possibility that the kingdom will increase its reserves by around 200 billion barrels, either through new finds or by increasing what it produces from existing fields,’ Nuaimi was quoted as saying by the official SPA news agency. That would be in addition to some 261 billion barrels of reserves that are the world’s largest, he told the annual meeting of graduates of the Saudi branch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Riyadh.
— AFP

Rolls-Royce in $100m S’pore fuel cell venture
British engine maker Rolls-Royce Group Plc. and a Singapore state-linked consortium will invest US$100 million to develop a power system based on fuel cell technology, the firms said on Wednesday. Rolls-Royce, which began researching fuel cell technology in 1992, will own 75 per cent of the venture, Rolls-Royce Fuel Cell Systems Ltd., with EnerTek Singapore Pte. Ltd. owning the remainder, the firms said in a joint statement. Fuel cells have been touted as environmentally sound electricity producers that could replace fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas as the world’s primary energy source. They operate by generating electricity through a chemical reaction that leaves water and heat as byproducts. Some companies are developing the technology to produce fuel cell-powered cars, portable gadgets and other equipment. Singapore’s consortium includes powerful state investment agency Temasek Holdings Pte. Ltd., the Singapore government’s Economic Development Board and Accuron Technologies, a private precision engineering and technology company.
— Reuters