Car dealers in Dhaka and Chittagong are busy handling the ever highest number of buyers in the last couple of weeks amid speculation that the government would restrict the ceiling for imported reconditioned cars to four-year-old from the existing six-year in the coming budget.
   Automobile traders said that the growing number of customers have now been hurrying to Chittagong Port to purchase Japanese reconditioned vehicles at a lower price.
   They said the number of customers contacting importers and visiting showrooms in Chittagong has increased manifold.
   A rough estimate by car dealers in the port city said that the number of retail customers increased by 300 per cent in recent weeks forcing the Chittagong-based showrooms to engage additional manpower to handle them.
   ‘My showroom has to handle 20 retail customers from Dhaka on an average nowadays,’ said Auto Heaven owner Muhammad Ershad Khatibi.
   The numbers was not more than five even two months ago. Additional manpower has been appointed to deal with the retail customers, he added.
   Bangladesh is one of the few countries where car sales continue to grow although the global economic slump resulted in a fall in vehicle sales in many countries.
   Bangladesh imports reconditioned vehicles from Japan through some 15 importers, mostly based in Chittagong, who dominate the business.
   An employee of Cars Heaven, another port-based dealer, told New Age that the ‘mad rush’ was triggered by speculation on possible reduction of ceiling for car imports to four years as well as duty enhancement in the coming national budget, expected to be announced on June 11.
   Prices of certain vehicles have gone down in the recent months, said Shahnewaz Kabir, another car importer.
   At present, nearly 6,000 cars of various types are in ready condition at the Chittagong port yard for sale. Besides, two more ships with nearly 4,000 reconditioned cars from Japan are expected to arrive at the port next month.
   Apart from the retail customers, corporate houses, bankers and garments owners are also thronging the showrooms in the port city.
   About 250 cars to 300 cars are being sold every day from the port depots, said the dealer.
   The dealers said price of cars is almost 10 per cent less in Chittagong compared to price at the Dhaka showrooms which is also a major reason for the growing rush of customers to the port city.
   Besides, many customers believe they would get genuine vehicles without any replacement of parts if those are bought direct from the port.
   Bangladesh reconditioned vehicles importers and dealers association president Habibullah Don, however, said the main reason for the rush of retail customers to the port city is the growing number of showrooms there. The number of showrooms in Chittagong has gone up to 35 from previous 15 in last one year, he said.
   But he said Dhaka-based cars dealers are not worried as at least 40 cars are being sold everyday by the 100 odd showrooms in the capital.
   ‘We are now selling on an average six cars per day from our Dhaka outlet. It was much less in the recent past’ said Goulam Moula Bhuiyan, a senior executive of KK Automobiles.
   A growing middle class and availability of easy loans from banks and leasing companies led to a rising sales of both new and reconditioned vehicles in Bangladesh since 2008.
   Some 14,944 new and reconditioned cars were sold in Dhaka last year, up 46 per cent from 2007, according to Bangladesh Road Transport Authority.
   Vehicles worth Tk 2,070 crore have already entered the country in the first nine months of the current fiscal years. The import value was at least 30 per cent higher compared to the value during the same period of 2007-08 fiscal, according to revenue board statistics.

Industries minister Dilip Barua Saturday made a fervent appeal to the people for consuming local made quality products in order to protect the domestic industries for the sake of industrialisation and employment generation in the country.
   The minister was addressing as chief guest at a conference to launch a campaign ‘My Products, My Country’ organised by the Bangladesh Commerce Industries at its Board Room with BCI president Shahedul Islam Helal in the chair.
   Workers’ Party of Bangladesh president and lawmaker Rashed Khan Menon and Golam Dastagir Gazi Bir Pratik addressed the function as special guests.
   Former BCI presidents Morshed Alam and AK Azad, business leader Abdur Rouf, among others, spoke.

After noticeable development of the Cox’s Bazar tourist spot, attention of real estate developers have turned to Kuakata, an exotic beach town and increasingly popular tourist destination.
   Rush of tourists has led to the construction of a large number of new hotels and motels at Kuakata in Patuakhali, one of the few sea beaches in the world from where one can see the sunrise as well as sunset.
   Some of the private companies have started building luxurious wooden bungalows in style of the dwellings used by the Rakhaines, a local ethnic minority community and a major tourism attraction.
   Real estate developing company Ocean City Limited has taken up a gigantic project in the beach town with plans to set up a five-star hotel, private power station, water treatment plant and hospital with foreign collaboration.
   Sources said the company will build up a modern model town on nearly 700 acres of land near the beach.
   Officials of the Ocean City Limited said they had already developed nearly 1,000 plots of 3 kathas, 5 kathas and 10 kathas in the planned tourist spot.
   ‘We will have a total of 2,200 residential plots of different sizes in the project area,’ said Ocean City Limited’s managing director Khandakar Ali Azam.
   Payments for the plots can be made in installments and 516 plots have already been sold to locals as well as clients from other districts for 50 per cent down payment, Azam added.
   The model town in Kuakata, very close to the world heritage site of the Sundarban mangrove forest, will also have schools, a modern market and other facilities to cater to the needs of the people living in the area, the company officials said.
   The construction work of the planned model town will start next year and the project is expected to provide job opportunity for nearly 30 thousand people, said the managing director.
   The handing over of the residential plots to customers will also begin in December next, said Azam.

The Bangladesh Bank has cancelled the provision of 20 per cent cash incentive on areca nut export after an investigation which detected misuse of the facility by some exporters, sources in the central bank said.
   The central bank on Thursday issued a circular to managing directors of all commercial banks not to receive cash incentive proposal from exporters of nuts eaten with betel leafs.
   ‘Most of the cash incentives on areca nut export have been misappropriated as some exporters with the connivance of bank and customs officials allegedly received incentive without making any export at all,’ said a senior Bangladesh Bank official.
   The official also said one of the exporters had showed the export of areca nuts for much higher price to obtain more cash incentive from the government.
   Sources said the central bank’s cash incentive department had conducted an investigation on areca nut exporters and found the NR Trading, Real Overseas and Real Corporation, all the three companies owned by Nazmul Islam, guilty of exporting areca nuts and mahogany fruit at prices many times higher than market prices.
   The investigation found the three companies had exported areca nuts to India for Tk 500 to Tk 550 a kilogram while the price of the item on the domestic market ranged between Tk 60 and Tk 80 a kilogram.
   Nazmul Islam has already received Tk 40 crore in cash incentive in seven years on the exports while he demanded Tk 49 crore, central bank sources said.
   He also received cash incentive of about Tk 1.5 crore using political influence on the immediate past governor’s last day in office.
   The AB Bank branch at Nawabpur, corporate branch of the Bank Asia and principal branch of the South East Bank in Dhaka allegedly helped him to have the cash incentive released against his export to India, sources said.
   When asked to comment on the issue, Nazmul Islam refused to talk with New Age on the matter.
   The Bangladesh Fruits, Vegetables and Allied Products Exporters Association president, SM Jahangir Hossain, on Thursday told New Age they had lodged complaints on several occasions with the Bangladesh Bank saying Nazmul Islam had received cash incentives without exporting nuts.
   ‘Nut exporters usually export the item by air while Nazmul Islam exported all of his consignments by road,’ he said.
   SM Jahangir Hossain also said the Mahogany fruit was not included in the government’s list of items for cash incentives, but Nazmul Islam had influenced some officials to receive cash incentive showing Mahogany fruit export to India.
   ‘He showed export of 110 tonnes of areca nuts in a day which is unbelievable,’ said a source in the exporters’ association.
   When contacted over telephone on Thursday, Nazmul refused to talk on the matter.
   Nazmul also owns the clearing and forwarding agency which dealt with the exports at the Benapole check post, the central bank sources said.

Bangladesh will export the skin, bone, teeth and meat of crocodile from a commercially-run firm from December.
   ‘We expect to start export of crocodile from next December,’ Mushtaq Ahmed, the chief executive of the country’s sole crocodile firm, Reptiles Firm Ltd, told the news agency.
   ‘As many as 100 crocodiles will be exported in first batch,’ he said.
   ‘The hide of the crocodile will be the main export product. A crocodile with all its meat, bone, and teeth can be sold up to $1,500.’
   The firm launched crocodile cultivation on 15 acres of land at Uthura of Bhaluka in Mymensingh after bringing 75 salt water reptiles of crocodylus porosus species from Malaysia on December 2004.
   Of them, eight died later on, he said.
   Mushtaq expected that they would not have any problem in getting buyers as the skin of such crocodiles was in great demand in the world market for manufacturing luxury product.
   He also expressed the desire to turn the reptile firm into a tourist spot.
   ‘We want to grow 15,000 crocodiles by 2015 with export of 5,000 crocodiles a year.’
   Mentioning the benefits of crocodile firm, he said, ‘The project requires a few workers. Apart from this, crocodiles are less vulnerable to disease.’
   Mushtaq said initial investment was Tk 5 crore which now stands nearly at Tk 8 crore.
   The chairman of the firm, Mesbahul Huq, a pharmacist, financed the project.
   The Equity and Entrepreneur Fund unit of Bangladesh Bank approved around Tk 2.5 crore in loan for the project.

A lawmaker at the centre of Britain’s growing expense account scandal said Saturday he had been humiliated by public revelations about his attempt to get taxpayers to pay for a duck hut on his country estate.
   Opposition Conservative Party legislator Peter Viggers’ duck hut — used to shield ducks from predators — has become a potent symbol of expense account excess in recent days.
   He tried in vain to bill taxpayers 1,645 pounds ($2,600) for the structure — just one of many misdeeds in a scandal that has turned British voters against their elected representatives and led many chagrined lawmakers to say they will step down when their current terms are up.
   ‘I have made a ridiculous and grave error of judgment,’ said Viggers, who has dropped plans to seek re-election. ‘I am ashamed and humiliated and I apologize. As has been reported, my claim for the duck house was rightly ‘not allowed’ by the Fees Office. I paid for it myself, and in fact it was never liked by the ducks and is now in storage.’

Wall Street reopens following a holiday weekend in search of direction after a choppy week, with worries over the recession-mired economy and the US government’s mounting debt weighing on the market.
   The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.10 per cent in the week to Friday to 8.277.32.
   The tech-dominated Nasdaq added 0.71 per cent to 1,692.01 while the broad-market Standard & Poor’s 500 index climbed 0.47 per cent in the week to 887.00.
   Investors could be hearing a warning in the market bromide of ‘sell in May and go away’ as they consolidated positions ahead of a three-day weekend, with the stocks and bond market closed Monday for the Memorial Day holiday that kicks off the US summer vacation season.
   Worries about rising unemployment, home foreclosures and the trillions of dollars the government is spending to shore up the economy left little room to dream of lazy afternoons in the sun.
   Government debt ratings gripped the attention of markets after Standard & Poor’s on Thursday warned Britain was at risk of losing its triple-A rating.
   Fresh concerns that the debt-swollen United States could lose its triple-A rating triggered steep selloffs in equities and weakened the dollar.
   Bonds plunged on the rating concerns. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury bond shot up to 3.448 per cent from 3.123 per cent a week earlier and that on the 30-year bond leapt to 4.392 per centfrom 4.083 per cent. Bond yields and prices move in opposite directions.
   The modest equities rise came after a selloff last week that had snapped a two-month rally as investors appeared to grow disenchanted with seeing ‘green shoots’ of recovery in weak economic and company reports.
   A series of worse-than-expected economic data hung over the market.
   A surprise drop in April retail sales suggested ‘greens shoots withering,’ said Ian Shepherdson at High Frequency Economics.
   ‘There is no momentum in spending; the freefall is over but shredded balance sheets and declining incomes mean a broadly flat trend is about the best we can expect.’
   New claims for unemployment benefits rose more than expected and the insured employment rate hit 5.0 per cent for the first time since 1982.
   ‘The S&P 500 may be stuck around here for a while, maybe until the next earnings season begins in July. The lucky streak of not-so-bad news may be over for now,’ said Ed Yardeni of Yardeni at Yardeni Research.
   The US Treasury’s June 1 deadline for General Motors to submit an acceptable restructuring plan or face bankruptcy weighed on the market.
   A filing for bankruptcy protection by the biggest US automaker could cause another surge in unemployment, following rival Chrysler’s collapse.
   ‘Further production shutdowns in the auto industry in the coming months, as well as dealer closings and other ‘ripple-effects’ among suppliers and other tangentially related businesses, are likely to push initial jobless claims back toward their recent highs,’ said Joseph LaVorgna at Deutsche Bank.
   The holiday-shortened week will be packed with key economic data to digest, from a reading on May consumer confidence on Tuesday to durable goods orders on Thursday.
   The shattered housing market, the epicentre of the financial crisis that spread globally over the past year, will be in focus, with sales data on existing homes on Wednesday and new homes on Thursday.
   Friday, the government will give its second estimate of first-quarter gross domestic product activity. The economy shrank a punishing 6.1 per cent, according to the initial estimate, after contracting at an annualized rate of 6.3 per cent in the fourth quarter.
   A Merrill Lynch survey offered a ray of hope, showing fund managers had turned sharply bullish from the ‘dark days’ of last October when the global firestorm accelerated and 60 per cent had forecasted a worsening outlook.
   ‘In May’s survey, a net 57 per cent say the economy will improve over the next 12 months, up from 26 per cent in April,’ the company said.

Planning minister AK Khandaker on Friday said the government needed efficient bureau of statistic to calculate and evaluate the country’s actual resources for utilisation in the wake of global recession.
   ‘Bangladesh will definitely be affected by the global economic slowdown; as a result the limited resources should be utilised properly,’ said the planning minister while speaking as chief guest at a seminar on ‘Economic statistics: collection and dissemination’ at the planning commission auditorium.
   The seminar was organised by the Bangladesh Statistical Association. President of BSA Quazi Mafizur Rahman and secretary general of BSA also spoke on the occasion.
   The minister also said the development projects would fail if the planning commission did not received accurate statistical data for implementation.
   ‘We have planned to increase the capacity of Bangladesh Bureau of Statistic,’ he added.
   In reply to a question, he said the government had no plan to give the BBS full autonomy.

European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet said Saturday the rate at which Gross Domestic Product is falling in developed countries is slowing and a recovery could be expected in 2010.
   ‘We are in a episode in the industrial world of a progressive slow-down of the fall of GDP.’