Lost opportunities -- ship building and repairing in Bangladesh
Sunday, 15 June 2008
BANGLADESH should have been in shipbuilding and repair long long ago, simply because of the fact that the Khulna Shipyard was set up in 1961 or so. This letter is in reply to an article under the same caption by the Managing Director of Khulna Shipyard Limited, Commodore R U Ahmed, published in the FE on June 2, 2008. Many countries including South Korea possibly did not have such facilities at that time to build ships. What could the Khulna Shipyard produce even in last nine years? But just see what the smaller shipyards in the private sector, with much less space and facilities, are doing.
On failure of Bangladesh to grab the opportunities for trade and industries the Commodore missed the main ones. Does he remember that in 1992 and 1993, one Japanese and two British high-powered and high profile investment teams visited Bangladesh? A Euromoney investment team also visited Bangladesh in those days.
Does he remember that on each of the days when the teams were in Dhaka, the then opposition had called hartals? Was it not meant to lose the great opportunities for investment and trade that investment can generate for Bangladesh?
Bangladesh failed to take such opportunities at different times for such reasons. Our nationalised industry is also a great source of loss. What are we doing now with the submarine cable links? Have we turned it to our advantage? But just compare what Bill Gates had done with the dial-up connection. We are very good at finding excuses, but we keep on failing. We are good at stating we could do this, we could do that. What have we done with the duty-free import of computers? And just look at our big neighbouring country to find out what they have done with the computers that had gone across the border to there.
It's time we utilise the available opportunities. It's time to stop making lame excuses, we could do this or that, if we had this or that.
Arif Ahmed
Segunbagicha
Dhaka
On failure of Bangladesh to grab the opportunities for trade and industries the Commodore missed the main ones. Does he remember that in 1992 and 1993, one Japanese and two British high-powered and high profile investment teams visited Bangladesh? A Euromoney investment team also visited Bangladesh in those days.
Does he remember that on each of the days when the teams were in Dhaka, the then opposition had called hartals? Was it not meant to lose the great opportunities for investment and trade that investment can generate for Bangladesh?
Bangladesh failed to take such opportunities at different times for such reasons. Our nationalised industry is also a great source of loss. What are we doing now with the submarine cable links? Have we turned it to our advantage? But just compare what Bill Gates had done with the dial-up connection. We are very good at finding excuses, but we keep on failing. We are good at stating we could do this, we could do that. What have we done with the duty-free import of computers? And just look at our big neighbouring country to find out what they have done with the computers that had gone across the border to there.
It's time we utilise the available opportunities. It's time to stop making lame excuses, we could do this or that, if we had this or that.
Arif Ahmed
Segunbagicha
Dhaka