The New Nation - Internet Edition

Islami Bank disburses Tk 15314.72m in RDS

BUSINESS REPORT

Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited (IBBL) has disbursed Tk 15314.72 million under Rural Development Scheme (RDS) as on March 31, 2008 swing growth rate is 47.72per cent against the same period of the' previous year. The recovery of investment is 99 per cent. This programme was implemented in 10237 villages of 61 districts through 129 branches of IBBL which has 50.38 million beneficiaries.

The IBBL launched its RDS program in 1995 aiming for rural devlopment and establishing Model Villages across the whole country by changing the destiny of poor rural people, unemployed rural youths, self-employment of down-trodden people, poor farmers and share-croppers.

The aims and objectives of this scheme are: to establish model villages within 16 kilometers radius of designated Branches of the Bank, to extend investment facilities to agricultural, other farming and off-farming activities in the rural areas, to create opportunity for self-employment and income generating activities of the rural people, particularly the rural unemployed youths and the rural poor, to alleviate rural poverty through integrated rural development approach,-to extend' investment facilities for rural housing, keeping in view the needs of housing facilities of the rural dwellers, to provide educational services, pure drinking water & sanitation and' medicare facilities to .down-trodden people.

The RDS programme continues its activities about 400 sectors including cultivation of 21 types of agrarian crops, flowers and fruits, purchase of agriculture implements and machinery buying agrarian machinery, rearing livestock and poultry farm, hatchery, rural transportation, housing and various types of off-farming sectors. Under this programme the group can receive maximum Tk 30,000 under the basis of guarantee.

Persons of the selected model villages interested to avail investment may apply in prescribed form through the concerned group in the designated branches of the bank. The bank shall sanction and disburse investment as per rule if the proposal is found viable. A new programme named Micro Enterprise Investment Scheme has been operated to fulfill extra demand for those who paid up investment in time after receiving highest investment and laid it out successfully.

Under this programme the concerned customer will received maximum Tk 2 lakh as per their demand and capacity. But to get this investment the customer should have particular guarantees.

Islami Bank Foundation has taken various supportive programme serving to education, medicare, and health services to the nation under the villi:tge of RDS.

The aims and objectives of this programme are: to arrange primary and Islami teaching for the children andadolecent under the village of RDS, to eradicatio'n illiteracy from the village, to encourage setting up library for the cultivation of knowledge, to rouse conscious about health 'informing health related information, to' make the people habituated to carry out the Islami Shariah about to keep their body fit, to habituate using pure water including having meal at every work, to arrange supplying pure water, to support setting up sanitary latrine, to organise vaccination programme, to create a chance of primary health nursing and to make easy the path of medicare treatment for complex diseases.

Thousands of people across the country have become financially well-off receiving investment from the RDS programe of the IBBL. Nazma Akter, residing in the village of Akur-takur in the district of Tangail has launched Block Boutique business receiving investment Tk 5,000 only from the RDS project and she enlarge more his business taking investment Tk 30,000. Now her total capital is Tk 2.5 lakh and 20 employees are serving in his factory. She received National Youth Award of 2007 to be first in divisional phase of RDS project.

Jahanara Begum a resident of Laksam under the district of Comilla has bought a milch cow taking investment Tk 5,000 only from, this project. Now she established a dairy farm consisting of 8 cows and she got 18 kg milk per day from this farm and'her monthly income is about Tk 15 thousand

Md. Nur Jamal inhabitant of Rajshahi has started a fish hatchery/ pesiculture taking investment Tk 5,000 only in 1999. Now he is a successful fish vender and his monthly income is about Tk 12,000. Shahjahana Begum of Patia under the district of Chittagong has set up a candle workshop receiving investment from this project. At present, her total capital is about Tk 1.80 lakh.

Rahima Begum a successful customer of RDS programe has purchased a rickshaw and rente it. Now she is owner of 62 rickshaw and her monthly income is about Tk 20,000.

Standard Chartered recognised as the 'Best Employer’ by ISA

Standard Chartered Bank has recently received the "Best Employer of IBA Graduates" Award from The Institute of Business Administration Alumni Association (IBMA). Dr. A. B. Mirza Md. Azizul Islam, Honorable Adviser, Ministry of Finance & Planning, Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh handed over the award to Osman Morad, CEO of Standard Chartered Bangladesh at the IBAM Alumni Day 2008 held in the capital recently.

"At Standard Chartered, we recognise our greatest assets are our employees," said Osman Morad, CEO of Standard Chartered Bangladesh. "We take great pride in our employees, which is why we continue to invest in recruiting, training, and retention programmes. We are dedicated to fostering the career development of our people, and creating a workplace and culture we can all feel good about. This award demonstrates our commitment to the community and the emphasis we place on attracting and retaining top talent in the marketplace." Sandeep Mookharjea, Head of Human Resource of Standard Chartered Bank was also present at the ceremony amongst other distinguished guests.

Standard Chartered Bank currently has more than 70,000 employees worldwide and over 1,400 in Bangladesh.

US economic recession: Bangladeshi homeowners, real estate businessmen in bad shape

Fakir Selim

From New York

The United States has now been facing the worst economic crisis for the last one year. The crisis began almost a year ago following the downtrend of housing market. Hundreds of housewoners including a large number of Bangladeshis living in different state of the country are in severe risk of their house foreclosure. The house mortgage companies and the loan providers are also in risk. Besides houseowners and mortgage brokers, a large part of Bangladeshi immigrants in usa who were in construction and real estate business are in a bad shape now.

Bush administration has been trying to prevent recession by taking various measures. Though officially, the government is saying that the economic situation now the country facing is not recession, economists say a clear recession is going on. According to the economists economic recession is a situation when a country's economy goes down for continuous two quarters. United States is in such a situation for more than two continuous quarters.

The housing and mortgage business of the country is completely collapsed. Unemployment rate has been increasing every week. The rate of us dollar is being affected and going down in compare to other foreign currencies, including euro, pound and yen.Although the US government does not confess the situation, the administration took several measures in last three months to boost up the country's economy.

As the first step the Bush administration announced an economic stimulus package through which the individual tax payers would be given rebate cheque between $300 and $600 according to their incomes.

The second steps was taken two weeks ago in which the treasury secretary of the country proposed the biggest ever reform plan. Named as 'blueprint' treasury secretary Henry Paulson advised to give policing power to the Federal Reserve to look after all business and commercial institutions of the country.

The third step was taken on Thursday (April 10) by the senate in which a bipartisan bill was passed to help the mortgage business companies and housewoners who are at risk of their houses to be foreclosed. Under this bill a $4 billion was proposed to help buyers who are interested to buy foreclosed and abandoned houses. Along with this $10 was also proposed to help housewoners to for refinancing and make an adjusted and affordable mortgage.

There are many other factors which clearly indicate that the United States is now under an economic recession. Experts said, the downtrend of housing business, credit crunch, high rate of joblessness, decreasing the rate of us dollar, lay off, etc are not only responsible for economic recession. There are some other major causes of which big war budget is number one.

The citizens of the country are eagerly waiting to see a new president in coming November. By this time, two major political parties, the Republican and the Democratic are trying to finalize the nomination of their president candidates. For republican, Arizona senator John MacCain have been nominated as their presidential candidate after primary and caucuses of various states. MacCain's contestants already surrendered and supported him.

Democrats are still in a fix to finalize their presidential candidate. Former first lady Hillary Clinton and Illinois senator Barrack Obama, both are equally popular among democrat voters. Both are hoping as the best contender. Experts said their candidacy would be finalized through super delegate.

The presidential candidates for both republican and democratic parties in their election campaign brought different issues including iraq war, social reform, educational reform, immigrants issues, etc, but practically none of them put any point on any solution of the ongoing economic recession.

The people of the united states are waiting to see who the man or woman to bring the country's economy back.

Rahimafrooz Energy appointed Hager's exclusive distributor

Rahimafrooz Energy has been appointed the exclusive distributor of world famous Hager Electro Systems Pte Ltd of France for Bangladesh.

An agreement was signed to this effect between the two companies in Dhaka recently. K.M Ali, Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Rahimafrooz Energy, and Vincent Loo, General Manager, (South East Asia, Singapore) of Hager Electro Systems signed the distributorship agreement.

Under the deal, Rahimafrooz Energy will exclusively distribute Hager wiring accessories and low voltage protection devices, including gang switch, socket, MCB, MCCB, RCD enclosure, time switch, transfer switch, contactors, etc, in the country.

Tanvir Ahmed Khan, Manager-Business Development, Mustafa Nasir Hasan, Head of Corporate Sales and Md. Hossain, Manager Finance and Accounts of Rahimafrooz Energy were also present on the occasion.

UCEP Donor Consortium meeting held

BUSINESS REPORT

The 16th Meeting of VCEP Donor Consortium was held on 24 April at UCEP Head Office at Mirpur, Dhaka. Representatives of Department for International Development (DFID), The Royal Danish Embassy (DANIDA), Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and Save the Children Sweden-Denmark (SCSD) and Members of UCEP Board of Governors and UCEP Association were present in the meeting. In his opening address the Chairperson of UCEP Board of Governors Mr. A. G. M. Shamsul Kamal thanked the development partners for their financial support and guideline for taking UCEP programme to a new height of success.

He also categorically mentioned about the recent development in UCEP Programmes like introduction of Integrated General and Vocational (IGV) Education in the general schools, inclusion of financial support to SSC (Voc.) students for Diploma in Engineering Courses, introduction of Child Rights and Advocacy Programme and inclusion of SME-Credit program and Employment Support Activities for self-employment of UCEP students. Mr. Kamal thanked Ms. Mahal Aminuzzaman of Danish Embassy and also the outgoing Chair of UCEP Consortium for her tireless efforts in guiding UCEP. He also congratulated Ms. Barbara Payne of DFID as the new Chair of the Consortium.

Ms. Mahal Aminuzzman, Program Officer of The Royal Danish Embassy and outgoing Chair of UCEP Donor Consortium mentioned that the donor partners are giving utmost priority to technical education for alleviation of poverty from Bangladesh.

The UCEP model of education should be replicated throughout Bangladesh to expedite the goal, she added. She also thanked VCEP Management for qualitative and quantitative changes in UCEP Programmes during the last couple of years.

Speaking on the occasion Ms. Barbara Payne, Senior Education Adviser of DFID and new Chair of UCEP Consortium said UCEP educational programme is a model in the vocational education arena of Bangladesh and now in a position to train other NGOs in replicating the model. She also mentioned that as a donor partner of Bangladesh DFID is inspired to work with UCEP and expressed optimism about the future growth and leadership role of UCEP as a vocational education provider.

The Executive Director of UCEP-Bangladesh Brig. Gen. Aftab Vddin Ahmad (Retd.) made a presentation on achievements of VCEP during the last project phase ended in June 2007. He also mentioned about the plan of expansion and diversification in the programmes during the project phase VI which started from December 2007.

Euro firms in Asian trade

AFP, Tokyo

The euro edged higher against the dollar in Asian trade on Friday amid skepticism about the chances of an interest rate cut in the eurozone despite worsening business confidence, dealers said. The euro rose to 1.5694 dollars in Tokyo afternoon trade from 1.5685 in New York late on Thursday, while slipping to 163.36 yen from 163.50.

The dollar dipped to 104.10 yen from 104.22.

Currency speculators moved to take profits after driving the euro lower a day earlier in response to a much weaker than expected German business survey, said Hideaki Inoue, head of forex trading at Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking Corp.

The Ifo research institute said its April business climate index for Germany fell to 102.4 from 104.8 in March, well below forecasts of a decline to 104.3.

ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet said Thursday that the euro's surge earlier this week to record levels "could hurt the European economy."

The soft data rekindled talk of a possible interest rate cut by the European Central Bank (ECB) in the coming months, but analysts said that stubborn inflation would make it hard for the ECB to loosen monetary policy.

"If oil prices fall then the ECB will have more room to cut rates. But until then it is difficult for it to move in either direction," said Inoue.

The euro's gains were capped by speculation that the US central bank might soon halt its series of interest rate cuts, possibly after one more 25 basis point reduction next week.

Confidence has been recovering on world stock markets recently as investors hope for a rebound in US economic growth later this year despite massive losses by major US banks on mortgage-backed securities gone sour.

Against regional currencies, the dollar rose to 1.3588 Singapore dollars in late Asian trade from 1.3513 a day earlier, to 994.40 South Korean won from 994.00 and to 31.62 Thai baht from 31.51.

It climbed to 30.33 Taiwan dollars from 30.30, to 42.07 Philippine pesos from 41.96 and to 9,222.50 Indonesian rupiah from 9,217.5.

IUB and CDMP jointly launch disaster management course

The Comprehensive Disaster Management Programme (CDMP), Ministry of Food and Disaster Management, Government of Bangladesh and Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB) jointly launched a 12-week short course/post graduate diploma course on "Leadership and Disaster Management" for capacity building and professional skill development of the Ministry as well as the key implementing officials of disaster management. The programme is being implemented with financial support from the UNDP, DFID and European Commission.

In the inauguration ceremony of the training programme, the Chief Guest Towhid Samad, Chairman, ESTCDT and well-known entrepreneur, special guest Ian Rector, Chief Technical Adviser, CDMP. IUB Vice Chancellor Prof. Bazlul Mobin Chowdhury. Pro Vice Chancellor Prof. M. Omar Rahman. Prof. Haroun Er Rashid. Director, School of Environmental Science and Management and Team Leader and JUB faculty Ms. Dil Rowshan spoke on the importance of the course.

Ian Rector said that Bangladesh would need to develop disaster management capacity further and appreciated IUB's offer of the training course. Towhid Samad expressed satisfaction that IUB, a private sector university, had been chosen for conducting the course. Prof. Bazlul Mobin Chowdhury thanked the Bangladesh Government in reposing confidence on JUB's ability and stated that they would always come forward to train human resources. Prof. Haroun Er Rashid and Prof. Omar Rahman made some opening remarks. while Ms. Oil Rowshan, gave the vote of thanks.

Under this programme, 20 officials from various line ministries of the Government will join leadership and team building, human resource management for disaster, disaster organisation & systems management, and disaster management development imperative courses to be taught by the senior faculty of the School of Environmental Science & Management and the School of Business of IUB.

This course aims at developing a group of highly skilled officials who will provide leadership in the field of disaster management in the coming days and prepare the country to fade the challenges of global warming, climate change and sea level rise.

Md. Nuruzzaman new General Manager of Janata Bank Limited

Md. Nuruzzaman has joined in Janata Bank Limited recently as new General Manager. Prior to his joining in the new post, he was posted as DGM in Local Office of the Bank. Md. Nuruzzaman has started his banking career in 1977 as Probationary Officer. During his long tenure of banking career he has worked in different branches, different areas, Divisional office and different divisions of head office. He obtained his MA in Economics from Dhaka University in 1975. In his long service life he has participated various training programmes, workshop & seminars at home and abroad. Presently he is posted at Khulna Divisional Office as Divisional Chief.

Bangladeshi immigrants in US celebrating spring thru' Pahela Boishakh

Fakir Selim, From New York

As soon as spring knocks the doors in most parts of the United States, immigrant communities from different parts of the world soars with their respective cultures and traditions. They start celebrating spring by organizing outdoor functions like street fair, cultural programs, festivals, etc.The immigrant Bangladeshi community is not far behind in compare with other Asian communities in USA. In all 50 states of the country, Bangladeshi immigrants spreaded their generations.

This year's spring festival began in Bangladeshi community through the coming of Pohela Boishakh, the first day of Bengali new years 1415. The states and cities populated with the Bangladeshi immigrants such as New York, Washington DC, Florida, Pennsylvania, Los Agneles, New Jersey, San Francisco, etc are now in festive mood.

Bangladeshi community in New York keep most of the city's convenient halls busy with various functions in each weekend. Saturdays and Sundays are the festive days for the immigrant Bangladeshies in New York. Although Pohela Boishakh is over on April 14, different regional organizations are still celebrating the new year by various programs. This Sunday also the Dhaka club of woodside, Club Sanam of Astoria, NTV building's ground floor, Ozone park's Madina restaurant, queens palace auditorium were jam packed with the people who came to celebrate Bengali new year's programme.

Different Bangladeshi regional organizations including Nowabganj association, Bangladesh American Education and Cultural Association, Jalalabad Association, Shapla Welfare Association and Ozone Park's Bangladeshi community celebrated pohela boishak on April 20.

The immigrant Bangladeshis will keep celebrating the spring by organizing various other programs like picnic and award programs. Moreover, a large number of Bangladeshis are taking preparation to go to Bangladesh in coming June during the spring vacation and end of the calendar year of the education of their children.

Bilateral trade with Netherlands 'not satisfactory'

BUSINESS REPORT

Despite having immense opportunities bilateral trade between Bangladesh and the Netherlands is not satisfactory.

Senior Vice President of the DCCI Salauddin Abdullah made the observation while addressing a seminar in the city recently, according to a press release. The Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DCCI) and the Netherlands Embassy in Bangladesh jointly organised the seminar on Business to Business Promotion between the Netherlands and Bangladesh. Abdullah said Bangladesh offers immense investment opportunities for the Netherlands in the textiles, readymade garments, jute, leather, ceramics, pharmaceuticals, steel and gas-based industries. He expressed the hope that the private sector development programmes would enhance bilateral trade and investment between the two countries.

Head of Economic Affairs and Development Cooperation and Deputy Head of the Netherlands embassy Fritz Meijnder was present at the seminar. Speaking on the occasion, Fritz said that there was lack of interest from the investors of both countries for joint venture projects. He stressed the need for holding more such seminars to bridge the gap between the parties.