Dwaipayan Barua

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is set to provide $750 million for vaccine purchase and to help the economy to recover from the fallout of the global coronavirus pandemic.

In 2017, with the view to alleviating the capital’s absurd traffic congestion, the government took up the Dhaka-Ashulia Elevated Expressway project to implement largely with Chinese funding.

In a rare move, the government is not rushing into a $3-billion loan offer from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as Bangladesh has received a huge amount of budget support from multilateral lenders to fight the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant is expected to become operational from 2023, months ahead of the scheduled 2024 timeframe, said Shaukat Akbar, its project director.

Bangladesh is taking on increasingly higher levels of debt to fund its infrastructure spending, crucial for the economy to level up to a middle-income one by 2041.

The transport of export and import containers to and from two private inland container depots (ICDs) was suspended as prime mover workers enforced work abstention to realise several demands.

Operations at the country’s premier Chattogram sea port have resumed after around 35 hours with a countrywide work abstention enforced by a section of logistics service providers being called off yesterday afternoon.

The transport operators’ countrywide strike yesterday affected export and import of goods at a time when businesses have been attempting to make a recovery from the fallouts of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Write-off loans rose slightly in the second quarter of 2021, although they remain at the lower level thanks to the eases of rules because of the coronavirus pandemic.

In a rare development, Chattogram port has been able to allow container ships to berth faster upon arrival over the past 40 days, enabling brisk delivery of imports.

Although  the overall implementation of the annual development programme (ADP)  marked a rise in the first two months of the new fiscal year compared to  the corresponding period a year before, the ADP  implementation in the health service sector is still lagging.

The steelmaker initiated the massive expansion plan in 2016 and invested Tk 2,390 crore to establish the state-of-the-art plant, which is the second of its kind in the world.

Over a month has passed but 15 Bangladeshi importers are yet to know the fate of a vessel, which was transporting around 11,000 tonnes of their steel products and abandoned by its crew for “water ingress and sinking” off the coast of Myanmar.

An overall decline in the country’s foreign trade last year for the pandemic brought the Chattogram port down nine places in the latest ranking of Lloyd’s List “One Hundred Container Ports 2021” analysing annual container transport of 2020.

The Chattogram port has slipped nine notches down in 2020 to rank 67th in terms of annual throughput of containers among 100 top busiest ports across the world, according to the 2021 edition of Lloyd’s List One Hundred Ports.

The construction of the Bay Terminal, a long-awaited project of the Chittagong port, is gaining momentum after slowing down due to the coronavirus pandemic as the government looks to complete it by 2024.

Garment manufacturers no longer want to take delivery of import consignments from private inland container depots (ICDs) alleging it took up too much time while the charges were exorbitant.

Over 3,000 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) of import-laden containers bound for Bangladesh are stranded at the Indian port of Krishnapatnam as the route’s two sole vessels no longer had permission to berth at the Chattogram port.

Bangladesh’s economy may continue to suffer under the Covid-19 pandemic throughout the current fiscal year due to vaccine shortages and the government’s incapability to enforce a strict lockdown, said a recently released Fitch Solutions report.

Private investment in Bangladesh fell to its lowest level in 14 years in the last fiscal year owing to the lingering uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic and continuing structural weaknesses.