The shipping routes off the coast of Bangladesh are among the most important in the world, but they're also some of the most dangerous because of rampant piracy. Al Jazeera's Nicholas Haque reports from the Bay of Bengal on pirates, as well as the shaky administration, whose job it is to combat this growing problem.
In 1995, scientists issued the first Global warming alert, but today, experts say that at least one fifth of Bangladesh will be swallowed up by rising sea levels within 50 years. AlJazeera report on the impact of policies.
Related Post: Care about Bangladesh?
Migrant workers from Bangladesh are part of a growing number who are being ripped off in highly organised scams. Workers are leaving their homes for the promise of security in Singapore, only to discover they have been duped.
Demand for mobile accessories in Bangladesh's booming mobile communications-market is increasing, according industry insiders.
"We've been importing Chinese mobile accessories since 1996. Our yearly-turnover has doubled since 2006,": a senior official of Anik-Telecom said, one of the leading mobile accessories importers in Bangladesh.
Demand for accessories have also doubled countrywide, due to the tremendous growth in mobile subscribers. Traders said, 70% of mobile accessories of their daily sales were from China. Bangladesh has more-than 30 million subscribers.
Via Xinhua
At a press conference inaugurating his tenure as the thirteenth U.S. ambassador to Bangladesh, Mr. James Moriarty noted that "promoting democracy, ensuring development, and denying space to terrorism are the key challenges.
The United States, he said, "will remain a close partner to the people of Bangladesh in each of these areas." Mr. Moriarty expressed admiration for "the achievements of the Bangladeshi people who fought for decades to win the right to govern themselves and control their own destiny."
U.S. - Bangladesh Relations: Download mp3
Via VOA-News
This is a comprehensive list of web-resources related to news and features on Bangladesh. It covers varied topics and subject interests.
English language >
Bengali language >
* This list on "Bangladesh News" is subject to changes.
Bangladesh is heading towards the path of becoming the third nuclear nation in South Asia. The topic came in discussion during meetings between the Chinese minister Yang Jiechi and Bangladesh's foreign advisor Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury.
The Chinese minister was on a two-day tour to Bangladesh recently.
The foreign advisor of Bangladesh said, China is a partner and the visit of Chinese minister would further strengthen this relationship.
´Our friendship is rooted in history, but like all relationships, ties between nations also have to be renewed and reinvigorated from time to time, and this visit was an occasion to do just that,´ the foreign adviser stated.
The Chinese foreign minister said, military cooperation is an important part of the overall bilateral relation between Bangladesh and China. Jiechi, who also met the army chief, General Moeen U Ahmed, made the remarks to journalists.
Via American Chronicle
Bangladeshi Foreign Affairs Adviser, Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury has said, the country needs to re-adjust its foreign-policy as a new era begins in Asia.
He said Asia is progressing fast in an unprecedented speed. So, the policies of Bangladesh need to be realigned with the global changes. Otherwise, the country would lag behind, a foreign office press release quoted him as saying.
Iftekhar said: "Perhaps, we do not realize that there is more reverse transfer of resources to those developed countries, who buy from us. We pay many times more in duties to them, than we receive in aid."
On the other hand, it is the booming economies of Asia that might help shape the future of Bangladesh. Power players of contemporary times are China, Japan, South Korea, ASEAN, India and Gulf states, he added.
Via Xinhua
Pressure is intensifying in Bangladesh for the interim government to end its state of emergency and release Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia, the country's top leaders. That is according to Al-Jazeera.
Related Link > 'The 2 Women' of Bangladesh
How do you define a country's status as the world's most maligned? With Bangladesh, there are countless examples of stupid-debauchery.
A Bangladeshi brother had advised me on this country's senseless indulgence in sensual pleasures. He said, "Bangladesh is a country of immoral and ignorant morons, who have never conquered a foreign-land..,". Although I disagreed on his remark, a recent incident has made me re-think the value of this statement.
Barrister Rizwan Hussain, who is a noted tv-personality and dedicated charity-worker in the UK, recently (14th April) escaped from the evil grips of the unruly Bangladeshi armed-forces. Local community channels in the UK, have been constantly repeating their calls for the "Justice for Barrister Rizwan Hussain".
As per tv-reports, the wayfarer Rizwan had decided to speak against the injustices suffered by the general-passengers at Dhaka airport; which is often said to be the most dis-organized and corrupt airport in the world.
In return for his honesty, several members of the Bangladeshi armed-forces decided to teach him a memorable-lesson in physical-pain.
They prowled around him like vicious hyenas. He was taken to a suitable environment for third-degree treatment and tortured for hours, until they realized that he may be a little influential to totally get rid-off. Killing innocent passengers in public by members of authority is nothing new at Dhaka airport.
In the mid 90s, I remember an innocent-soul (Surat Miah) from Teeside being murdered by airport staff in Dhaka. Mr. Rizwan Hussain's experience is just another example of this senseless-deprivation.
I recently drafted an article entitled, "Fuck Bangladesh", and was sometimes perturbed as I belonged to this culture of impunity. Although, it now seems okay and I am ashamed for not finding a more suitable-title for that article.
Truly Bangladesh, you never fail to amaze me!
Facebook Group: Justice for Rizwan Hussain!
Via Bangladesh-Blogger
Bangladesh has a number of organized & lavishly funded fundamentalist militias and a government that yields to their pressure on all matters.
Understandably, there has been growing concern over the possibility of Bangladesh becoming a country like Afghanistan under Taleban rule.
Addressing a press-conference in Dhaka on 5th September 2004, Joseph Cofer Black, the US State Department's coordinator for counter-terrorism, who was visiting the country in wake of the attack on Awami League's rally on 21 August, affirmed that USA was looking at Bangladesh's role as a terrorist platform.
Many would, however, scoff at the suggestion that a shift might be under-way from Afghanistan to Bangladesh, arguing that the situation in Bangladesh today is very different from Afghanistan in 1994 when the Taleban emerged.
Bangladesh is a far more developed country than Afghanistan. It has a vocal and assertive civil society supported by an active and secular intelligentsia. More important, it is a Muslim country with a significant degree of religious tolerance, where women play important roles in the country's social and economic lives.
Related Link > Radicalism in Bangladesh
Via Bangladesh-Blogger
Colonization and natural disasters have wrought havoc upon Bangladesh, but Henry Kissinger and George Harrison, quips Iqbal Quadir of Lexington, did the most damage to the country of his birth.
The former US secretary of state's infamous description of the South Asian nation as an "international basket case" and the former Beatle's legendary Concert for Bangladesh in 1971 saddled the war- and flood-ravaged land with an unshakable reputation as hapless and dependent on handouts for survival.
"That has been very damaging to us," said Quadir, who is the executive director of MIT's Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship. "Because the country is a so-called basket case, investment never came to us."
Quadir, 49, doesn't dispute that Bangladesh has its troubles but rejects the notion that Bangladeshis need to be rescued by rich countries. On the contrary, said Quadir, Bangladeshis are as innovative and hard-working as anyone but until recently have lacked the means to unleash their entrepreneurial spirit.
He proved it with his own company, Grameenphone, which became the largest cellphone company in Bangladesh largely by selling its phones on credit to poor rural women who in turn rented phone minutes to neighbors, making money for themselves while providing a public service. "I happen to be Bangladeshi, which is why I had some emotional reason to think about it seriously." he said.
> A bottom-up plan to turn Bangladesh's economy upside-down
Bangladesh and its nearly 150 million people have remained stable and largely peaceful under a very differently focused strongman, Gen. Moeen U. Ahmed.
Under Moeen's direction, the military intervention in Bangladesh has been largely measured. His approach offers a potential alternative path for developing countries immersed in interminable political conflict.
Bangladesh has been a sovereign nation for less than four decades. It wrenched itself from the heavy grip of postpartition Pakistan only in 1971.
Since then, however, Bangladesh has been convulsed by its own internal battles. Many have occurred between civilians, and some between soldiers and civilians.
But almost all have been about control and the spoils of Bangladesh. Few of the differences among the various contenders, whether in uniform or civilian dress, have been about ideology. Chief among the civilians have been the dynastic political oligarchies of the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party has been somewhat closer to India, and India's size, interests and relative economic power have greatly affected Bangladesh. But otherwise, there is little to separate the Bangladesh Nationalist Party from the Awami League. What the two have most in common is a striving for power.
Transparency International has rated Bangladesh either the most corrupt country in the world, or nearly so, consistently since the 1990s.
Many nations are riven by ethnicity, language, religion or caste. Not so Bangladesh, one of the most homogenous large nations on Earth. About 95 percent of its people are Bengali-speaking Sunni Muslims.
The American-trained Moeen assumed power in January 2007 after Bangladeshis, prompted by the Awami League, rioted in the streets of Dhaka, the capital.
The protests were aimed at the corrupt rule of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the prospects of unfair elections that would perpetuate BNP power.
Moeen expressed shock at television images, broadcast around the world, of Bangladeshis killing each other and destroying Dhaka. The army had to separate the politicians, according to Moeen, and intervene to prevent bloodshed.
At the time and since, Bangladeshi public opinion has broadly supported the intervention. The Awami League and the BNP had been feuding, with occasional bloodshed, since 1991, when civilians led by Khaleda Zia of the BNP replaced a previous military junta. Power changed hands a few times over the next decade.
But the various governments brought little economic growth and/or stability to Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world.
Moeen's intervention, unlike Musharraf's coup in Pakistan in 1999, led not to direct military rule, but to the installation of a caretaker government of civilians.
Moeen and the military act as the behind-the-scenes backbone of a largely technocratic government. The acting president is styled as "chief adviser."
The various Cabinet ministers are called "advisers" as well, such as "foreign affairs adviser," and so on. Though Moeen and his fellow generals hold the ultimate reins of power, they largely try to stay in the background.
Moeen "consults" with the chief adviser only a few times a week, according to officials. And he refrains from issuing "orders." That makes Moeen's approach unusual, and conceivably more effective.
Moeen frequently reiterates that, as promised, full civilian rule will resume and elections will be held in December. Indeed, Moeen asserts that the dangers of soldiers staying on too long are greater than the risks posed by politicians.
Moeen has not invented a mechanism for vaccinating Bangladesh against a resumption of the feud between the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Nor will he. The army also refuses to intervene in the court cases now under way to determine whether former political rulers should be convicted.
Ready or not, the generals in Bangladesh will let civilians retake power in less than a year, in December. Conceivably, a new national security council could be installed constitutionally to give the soldiers some continuing oversight.
That would be innovative, and it would provide another lesson for troubled developing countries. Moeen and his colleagues are attempting to craft a new trajectory for a troubled country, a nation with its own potential for extremism.
The generals have succeeded in charting a new path between corrupt, inefficient civilians and heavy-handed military tyranny without arousing civil discontent. Their quasi-democratic instincts could plot a path for others.
Via Bangladesh-Blogger
Bangladesh's economy is 44.9 percent free, according to a 2008 assessment, which makes it the world's 149th freest economy.
Its overall score is 3.1 percentage points lower than last year—one of the biggest declines in the world, reflecting lower investment, business, and labor freedom.
Bangladesh is ranked 27th out of 30 countries in the Asia–Pacific region.
Bangladesh's fiscal freedom and government size score relatively well, which probably reflects severe underdevelopment and black market activity.
Restrictions on starting new businesses and obtaining commercial licenses are fairly loose. Closing a business, however, is not simple.Bangladesh's barriers to trade freedom are disastrous. The country also suffers from weak investment freedom & property rights.
Corruption is common.
Chaotic regulations and restricted market sectors impede greater foreign investment, as does a haphazard and politicized approach to the rule of law.
The banking sector is plagued by similar problems.
Background:
Bangladesh, formerly a parliamentary democracy, is now run by a military-backed regime that overthrew the elected government in January 2007. The generals have promised to hold elections by the end of this year.
One of the world's poorest nations, Bangladesh had made progress in recent years with growth in its export sector, particularly in the garment industry.
The formal financial system remains weak. The majority of Bangladeshis work in agriculture, though service industries now account for around half of GDP.
Natural disasters and inadequate infrastructure hamper economic development.
Business Freedom
The overall freedom to start, operate, and close a business is limited by Bangladesh's national regulatory environment. Starting a business takes an average of 74 days, compared to the world average of 43 days.
Obtaining a business license requires less than the world average of 19 procedures. However, commercial regulations can be unclear and inconsistent, and the lack of transparency raises start-up and operational costs.
Closing a business is a lengthy process.
Trade Freedom
Bangladesh's weighted average tariff rate was 55.8 percent in 2005. Import and export restrictions; numerous border taxes and fees; restrictive labeling requirements; burdensome import licensing rules; export subsidies and other support programs; government monopolies and state trading boards; complex, non-transparent government procurement; inefficient and corrupt customs administration; and weak enforcement of intellectual property rights also add to the cost of trade. An additional 20 percentage points is deducted from Bangladesh's trade freedom score to account for these non-tariff barriers.
Fiscal Freedom
Bangladesh has moderate tax rates. The top income tax rate is 25%, and the top corporate tax rate is 30%. Other taxes include VAT & property tax.
In the most recent year, tax revenue as a percentage of GDP was 8.7%.
Freedom from Government
Total government expenditures, including consumption and transfer payments, are low. In the most recent year, government spending equaled 15.1 percent of GDP. Privatization has been hindered by bureaucratic resistance.
Monetary Freedom
Inflation is moderate, averaging 6.5 percent between 2004 and 2006. Relatively unstable prices explain most of the monetary freedom score.
An additional 15 percentage points is deducted from Bangladesh's monetary freedom score to adjust for price-control measures that distort domestic prices for goods produced in state-owned enterprises & some pharmaceuticals.
Investment Freedom
Officially, foreign investment is generally welcomed, but utilities and other critical sectors are not open to the private sector, and potential investors face a host of challenges: bureaucratic procedures, unnecessary licenses, high levels of corruption, an unpredictable security situation, and uncertainty about contract and regulatory enforcement. Bangladesh is deeply in need of public administration reforms. Most capital transactions are controlled or prohibited.
Non-resident companies are subject to a higher corporate tax rate (37.5 percent) than are publicly traded companies (30 percent).
Financial Freedom
Bangladesh's financial services sector is small and underdeveloped. Financial supervision is weak, and fraudulent transactions, mismanagement, and political influence in lending are common. The central bank is not independent.
In 2006, the banking system consisted of 4 nationalized banks, 5 development financial institutions, 30 private commercial banks, and 10 foreign banks.
Foreign banks are generally restricted to foreign trade business. Nationalized banks dominate the system, controlling over half of banking assets.
An extensive microfinance presence is largely unsupervised. There are 30 private insurance companies, including a foreign-owned firm, but the major portion of insurance activity is controlled by two state-owned companies. Bangladesh has two stock exchanges, but market capitalization is low. In 2006, the government strengthened the criteria for the listing of firms on either stock market.
Property Rights
Bangladesh has a civil court system based on the British model. Although the constitution provides for an independent judiciary, the lower courts are considered part of the executive branch and suffer from corruption. Contracts are weakly enforced, and dispute settlement is further hampered by shortcomings in accounting practices and real property registration.
Freedom from Corruption
Corruption is perceived as pervasive. Bangladesh ranks 156th out of 163 countries in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index for 2006.
Labor Freedom
Bangladesh's labor market is burdened by relatively inflexible employment regulations that hinder employment creation and productivity growth. The non-salary cost of employing a worker is low, but dismissing a redundant employee can be difficult. The difficulty of laying off workers creates a risk aversion for companies that would otherwise hire more people and grow.
Via Bangladesh-Blogger
A short-film containing the truth about Bangladesh. A repressed voice of a freedom-fighter overcomes all barriers to tell us his story. Although he donated his limbs for a so-called freedom, his disability has become a mockery.Bangladesh Blogger says:
Nazrul had written >
Osho'hai jati moriche dubiya, jane'na shontho'ron,
Kandari! Aaj dekhibo tumar matri-mukti'phon.
'Hindu na Muslim?' Oo'i jigga'she kun-jon?
Kandari! Bolo dubiche manush, shon'than m'or ma-r!
Shame on myself, for the infidelity of consciousness.
Post via Bangladesh-Blogger
David Miliband urged Bangladesh on Saturday to return to the democratic process "as soon as feasible".
"We hope the state of emergency will be lifted in due course and parliamentary elections will be held by the end of the current year as pledged by the caretaker government," Miliband told a news conference at the end of his two-day visit.
Miliband voiced Britain's support for ongoing reforms in Bangladesh, and steps taken to hold dialogue between the government and political parties.
"We encourage a positive and constructive dialogue between political parties and the caretaker government," Miliband said adding "we want to support strong, independent, effective democratic institutions."
sked to comment on the two detained prime ministers, Miliband only said: "Judicial process should be fair, and free from any interference." Miliband met head of the government Fakhruddin Ahmed, army chief Moeen U. Ahmed and A.T.M. Shamsul Huda, Chief Election Commissioner.
Via Bangladesh-Blogger
Why does poverty still exist despite decades of development aid?
In this talk, Iqbal-Quadir explains why "aid does damages: because it empowers authorities instead of people," and advocates a new approach to development from below, "by the people for the people." His own experience as a child in Bangladesh and later a banker in New York brought him to realize that "connectivity is productivity" -- and that a simple cell phone has enormous power.
Now his telecom company, Grameenphone, offers service to most of rural Bangladesh, creating new opportunities by connecting villages to the world.
