Foreign business proposals being diverted from Bangladesh

Ongoing political turmoil has been affecting the country’s foreign business deals as foreign delegates have refused to visit Bangladesh on security grounds, businesses said.

The foreigners’ apathy to make trips to Bangladesh has come as a big blow to the local industrialists who are now in fear of losing business opportunities. Some of the overseas delegates have already diverted their proposals to other countries as alternative options.

According to them, many companies in recent weeks traveled to third countries like the United States, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, and even India to negotiate business agreements.

Sectors like apparel, shrimp, manpower and other export-oriented industries have been worst affected by the turmoil.          

The data with the Special Branch (SB) of police showed the number of foreign visitors by air falling to 304,132 with 50 per cent decline in last January-November period from 616,683 in the same period a year earlier.

“Due to ongoing political turmoil, business agreement signing is being done abroad,” Fazlul Hoque, managing director of the Plummy Fashions, a leading woven garment and sweater manufacturing company, told the FE.

He said most of his company’s business deals with companies from the US and the European Union (EU) have been signed in the US in recent weeks.

Mr Hoque, also former president of Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BKMEA), said, “The foreign partners are afraid of coming here. Bangladesh is going to lose a big share of world trade.”

“My foreign business partners now prefer Singapore, Thailand, the US, the UK, the UAE and Malaysia for signing business deals there,” he said.

Managing director of Evince Group Anwar-ul-Alam Chowdhury Parvez said signing of business agreements abroad is costlier and time-consuming.

“It is making our business less competitive,” he said, adding that exports to new destinations been reduced by 30 per cent in recent times.

Admitting the fact, president of the Federation of Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Kazi Akram Uddin Ahmed said more than 80 per cent of the country’s foreign business partners have been asking them to negotiate deals in the third country for the last couple of months to avoid political turbulence here.  

He cited an incident and said a foreign buyer of Bangladeshi garment products was ‘harassed’ in recent months by the political activists in Dhaka. “So, tell me, who will visit Bangladesh amid political violence,” he said.

A senior official of the Penguin International Limited said the Building Construction Authority (BCA) under the ministry of Development of Singapore last month wrote a letter stating that it would not send any delegation in January, 2014 to Dhaka to take examinations of Bangladeshi workers.

“The BCA in its letter said they will take decision on whether they would send their team in February after observing the political atmosphere in Bangladesh,” he said. It will have a negative impact on the country’s manpower export.  

“This means no skilled workers will get opportunities to get jobs in the Singaporean labour market in January,” he said. Some 10,000 Bangladeshi workers on an average go to Singapore a month.   

The Penguin International Limited under the joint collaboration with Singapore runs the Singapore International Training Institute and Setsco-SRCI Training and Testing Centre, which is the pioneer training and testing centre (TTC) of its kind so far established in Bangladesh.

Director (foreign investment) of the Board of Investment (BOI) Ali Kadar told the FE that the current political volatility has held up more than Tk 100 billion in the form of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) from several countries.

He said foreign investors from the US, the UK, the UAE, China, France, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait are interested in making billions of dollars investment to take advantage of the lucrative market in Bangladesh.

The foreign investors several times came here with investment proposals but under the changed circumstances, they have now adopted a wait-and-see policy for taking investment decisions, Mr. Kadar said.

Talking about the issue, Abdus Salam Murshedy, president of the Exporters Association of Bangladesh (EAB) said that big business firms of the country have started opening their branch offices overseas, considering such a situation.

The Standard Group, the Nassa Group, the Opex Sinha Group, the Ha-Meem Group and the Ananta Group already set up branch offices in Hong Kong, the UK and Singapore in recent months to keep business deals out of any trouble.

Salman Kabir, Public Relations Manager of the Pan Pacific Sonargaon Hotel termed the October-February period as peak season for hospitality business and said their occupancy has gone down by 50 per cent in the last two months.

“Overseas business delegates largely enjoy their hospitality services. But the occupancy rate shows that foreigners are not at all showing their interest for visiting Bangladesh,” he said. At the same time, the number of room-booking cancellation has gone up sharply.

Foreign business proposals being diverted from Bangladesh