Myanmar has expressed willingness to sign agreement for construction of 153 Km. long cross border Bangladesh-Myanmar Friendship Road. The mega project involving nearly Tk 9.46 billion (946 crore) is likely to be implemented in two phases as Yangon broke more than six months of silence and responded positively, in response to Dhakas request, to recognise the draft agreement already prepared.

Sanyang Industry Company, a motorbike and auto manufacturer in Taiwan, said on March 5 it will invest 70 million US dollars in Vietnam for commercial vehicle production. The 70 million dollars is the preliminary plan. It is possible we will pour more funds to Vietnam, encouraged by the country’s growing economy after its entry into the World Trade Organsation, a company spokesman said.

Bilateral trade between Taiwan and China in 2006 rose to 88.12 billion US dollars, up 15.4 per cent from the 2005 level on strong demand from China. The figure accounted for 20.7 per cent of Taiwan’s total external trade in 2006, compared with 20.0 per cent in 2005. Last year, Taiwan registered a trade surplus with China of 38.54 billion dollars, up 6.6 per cent from a year earlier.

The council of advisers on February 28 decided to operate the Newmooring Container Terminal at Chittagong Port under SOT (service, operation and transfer) system. The decision was taken at a meeting of the council of advisers with Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed in the chair. However, the decision will be effective after the vacation of the existing court order against operating the terminal on the basis of SOT. It was decided in the meeting that the terminal would be operated by any internationally recognised, experienced and efficient operator.

Despite slow foreign direct investment (FDI) and foreign aid, the country’s overall balance of payment (BoP) surplus reached $347million in the first six months of the current fiscal. The BoP was $201million deficit in the same period last year. The current account balance surplus marked a 132 percent rise during the July-December period in FY 2007 as it reached $579 million against $247million in the same period of FY 2006. Country’s export outweighed import in the first six months this fiscal.

The country’s gross domestic product will increase by one per cent and foreign trade by 20 per cent if inland water, rail and road transport between Dhaka and Chittagong can be upgraded to the global standard. This encouraging projection was made in a draft report presented at a stakeholders workshop at the Asian Development Bank on March 4. It was conducted under the ADBfunded technical assistance programme and was titled Improving the Efficiency of Transport Logistics in the Dhaka-Chittagong Corridor.

India has called upon the member-countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to come together to meet the energy needs of the region efficiently, and mooted specific proposals for necessary interconnectivity. Inaugurating the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Energy Dialogue at New Delhi on March 5, Indian Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde also floated a specific proposal for developing inter-country energy grid connections.

Bangladesh expatriates sent home a record US$ 3.81 billion in the first eight months of fiscal 200607, marking a 27.23 per cent growth over that of the same period of last fiscal, the central bank sources said. The country’s foreign exchange reserve stood at $4.14 billion on March 5 due to robust growth of remittances from Bangladeshis working abroad. The remittance in the period is seen as a continuation to last fiscals trend and record inflow of $4.806 billion. The growth in 200506 was 24.89 per cent over the previous fiscal.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) on March 5 requested the power division to strengthen the Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission (BERC) in order to help accelerate the pace of development activities in the power sector with donors support. The Manila-based donor agency also suggested to recover a huge amount of outstanding bills of the state-owned Power Development Board (PDB) from different government entities and to pay the arrears to the independent power producers (IPPs) for purchasing electricity from the private companies.

Asian Development Bank (ADB) has made a forecast of 6.5 percent GDP growth in Bangladesh in 2007 fiscal, a 0.2 percent fall compared to the last financial year, assuming a check in any further potential momentum in growth by political instability and power shortfall. Growth is expected to moderately reflect more normal agriculture growth following the last years post-flood high growth, stated the ADBs Bangladesh Quarterly Economic Update, December 2006 released on February 25.

International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), The world business organization in collaboration with German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) is organizing a daylong workshop on the revised international trade rules for Letters of Credit (L/C) known as UCP 600 on February 26 at the Bangladesh-China Friendship Conference Centre (BCFCC) in Dhaka.

International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), The world business organization in collaboration with German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) organised a daylong workshop on the revised international trade rules for Letters of Credit (L/C) known as UCP 600 was held on February 26 at the Bangladesh-China Friendship Conference Centre (BCFCC) in Dhaka.

International Chamber of Commerce-Bangladesh organized a daylong workshop on Understanding the UCP 600 for professionals on February 27 at the Bangladesh-China Friendship Conference Centre (BCFCC) in Dhaka. ICCB President Mr. Mahbubur Rahman inaugurated the workshop.

President of ICC Bangladesh Mahbubur Rahman urged the central bank to adapt with the rules of cross border business transactions in tandem with the developed countries. He further said that in some cases Bangladesh did not adapt itself with the updated rules and as a result external business of the country suffer from incongruent trade practices.

The two-way trade between Bangladesh and the USA grew 19 per cent and crossed $3.6 billion in 2006 with trade balance heavily tilting in favour of Dhaka. US foreign trade statistics, updated on February 14, reveal that in 2006, Bangladesh’s exports to the USA amounted to $3,270 million while imports figured $333 million, raising the total volume of bilateral trade to $3,603 million. Bangladesh’s export to its single biggest destination recorded 21.6 per cent growth last year, largely outpacing the 6.4 per cent rise in import of American goods.

Foreign portfolio investment in the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) last month shot up by around 200 percent over the previous months investment. The DSE through block market transactions witnessed foreign portfolio investment worth Tk 105.17 crore in January this year, which is around 6.5 percent of the total turnover in the month. In December last year, the DSE experienced Tk 35.33 crore foreign portfolio investment.

Business Leaders from the SAARC countries on February 18 adopted a 13point policy reform agenda to achieve intraregional trade of 20 billion dollars by 2010 and reduce the cost of doing business. The Mumbai Declaration adopted at the two-day Leaders Conclave which ended here made a resolve to implement SAFTA, in letter and spirit, prune the number of items on sensitive lists, remove non-trade barriers and regularise and liberalise trade in services.

The World Bank said bilateral trade between India and Pakistan, now at $1 billion, could be pushed nine times to $9 billion with the removal of barriers relating to politics, infrastructure, corruption and red-tape in the two South Asian neighbours. World Bank Managing Director Graeme Wheeler said despite a common location and history, South Asia was the least-integrated region in the world.

Trade volume between China and Russia hit a record 33.4 billion US dollars in 2006, up 15 per cent from the previous year. Currently, Russia is the eighth largest trade partner of China and China is Russia’s the fourth largest trade partner. China invested in 79 projects in Russia last year and Chinese investment, excluding the financial sector, reached 470 million US dollars, up 131.5 per cent year-on-year.

China and India kicked off the Year of Friendship through Tourism. The tourism departments of the two countries released a joint logo for the China India Year of Friendship through Tourism, which is made up of Chinese landmark the Great Wall and India’s Taj-Mahal as well as the two national flags.
China and India agreed to launch this campaign as one of the key efforts to deepen the strategic and cooperative partnership.