Bangladesh government to buy 6 new ships
The government has taken a move to procure six new feeder vessels for Bangladesh Shipping Corporation (BSC) at a cost of Tk 30 billion (Tk 3000 crore) against a suppliers' credit line by China, The Financial Express reports.
China National Machinery Import & Export Corporation (CMC) has agreed to provide the credit to the government on condition of procuring the feeder vessels from its designated company.
A six-member committee of the Shipping Ministry, headed by Commodore Moqsumul Quader, is scheduled to visit Singapore on June 4-6 to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the CMC to fix the terms and condition of the loan, the shipping ministry sources said.
The local ship manufacturers, however, have strongly opposed the move, stating that they are capable of supplying the vessels of the same quality to the BSC at much lower price than that of China.
Ananda Shipyard and Slipways chairman Abdulah-hel-Bari said it is a strongly negative move taken by the government that would "harm the local shipbuilding industry."
"The government could have bought the ships from the local companies by arranging money from abroad," he said, adding if the government procures those ships from local companies, the country's nascent ship-building industry will get a fillip.
Shipping Minister Shahjahan Khan said that the national flag carrier is over burdened with old ships, negatively impacting its operational performance and slashing severely its profit margin.
"We want to bring six brand new ships from globally reputed companies on a suppliers' credit from China," the minister said.
Earlier, the ministry in a meeting approved a BSC proposal to procure two bulk carriers of 30,000 to 35,000 DWT (dead weight tonne) capacity, two product carriers having the same capacity in terms of DWT and two container feeder vessels of 1000 to1200 TEUs (twenty feet equivalent units).
Executive director of BSC Md Mostafa Kamaluddin said that the national flag carrier has no container feeder in its fleet and hence it is lagging behind its competitors in local and global shipping business.
The BSC procured its latest bulk cargo vessel MV Banglar Shikha in 1991. Since then, the national flag carrier could not add a single ship to its fleet during the last 20 years.
In December, 2010, the board of directors of the BSC which is headed by the Shipping Minister, took the move to purchase a container feeder vessel and to dispose two age-old general cargo vessels - Banglar Urmi and Banglar Gourab - that were procured in 1982 and 1984 respectively.
The BSC has been incurring losses for the last two decades mainly due to its operations with the support of 13 ships of 28 years' old on an average, in its fleet, requiring it to spend a large chunk of money on repair works quite often. Seven ships, out of its total of 13, remain in the dry dock and maritime workshop for the most part of the year.