The country’s burgeoning shipbuilding industry, which is now witnessing a slowdown against the backdrop of falling demand of ships from Europe, awaits multi billion dollar export orders next year. Buyers of Europe, the major destination for Bangladeshi shipbuilders, are now reluctant a bit to provide local shipbuilders with export orders due to the continuous economic jitters that followed the global financial crisis.

Amid the crisis, local shipbuilders are doing extraordinary well because of the country’s unique characteristics of low cost of production and skilled engineers,  one official of leading shipbuilder said.

The government support such as green channel and bonded warehouse facilities and reduction in import duty for raw materials led to the performance, the official added that now the industry needs banking support to compete with archrivals India and Vietnam.

“We have advanced much in building small vessels.
We are not out of the world market and those are placing orders mostly from Europe where financial condition
is not well.

we need banking supports to offset the slowdown,” KM Mahmood ur Rahman, chairman of Bangladesh Shipbuilders’ Association (BSA), told BSS.

Rahman, also president of Highspeed Group of Companies, said banking supports are indispensable for competing with archrivals India and Vietnam.

The supports include Bangladesh Bank’s Tk 200 crore refinancing scheme as committed earlier, scraping bank guarantees, exemption of L/C (letter of credit) conformation costs and arrangements of loans with low interest rates as working capital.

Source: The Independent/ Bangladesh/ 10th Dec 2011