Bangladesh's Corporate World

Bangladesh, as a nation, is heavily reliant on its garments industry. Over the past two decades, the garments industry has become a major foreign currency earning source. It is presently a $20 billion industry and a source of employment for approximately 3.2 million workers. Undeniably, the garments industry proved its worth and credibility . Buyers from across the world, mainly from the developed countries, chose Bangladesh for several reasons; the main being availability of cheap labor. Among others includes the fact that Bangladesh is a place where there are no strict rules to follow or that the rules are not enforced properly. However, the recent incidents including the building collapse in Saver damaged the industry’s image like a hurricane and are anticipated to have a long term impact. There are reports suggesting that many major garments buyers including GAP, Wal-Mart and Primark are considering reevaluating their contracts with the Bangladeshi garments manufacturers,...

It is in fact quite amazing that despite the global shocks, natural crisis, and local political instability, Bangladesh was able to maintain around 6 percent growth rate over the past few years. The GDP growth of Bangladesh was 3percent in the 1970s, and increased by 1 percent on average every decade. The credit goes to government's efforts to control population growth, which has significantly declined over the years. The per capita GDP growth rate was 1.7 percentage points on average every decade. Over the last three years, approximately 15 million people came out of absolute poverty due to the acceleration in the growth rate. Openness in the economy, financial deepening, macroeconomic stability and population control are some of the major reason Bangladesh experienced a steady growth over the years. Bangladesh now targets to enter the middle-income country strata by 2021. A recent report by World Bank said that in order to attain the middle-income status, remittances and GDP gro...

Bangladesh would face a slower economic growth during the current fiscal predicts the World Bank. However, it said that Bangladesh would enter the middle-income country group by 2021 if its employment rate increases by 2 percent per year. Over the past five years, the average growth rate of Bangladesh was 6.1 percent. This growth has particularly been as a result of the population growth, increase in productivity and enlargement of labour force participation in foreign lands and growth of local businesses. Though employment increased over the past couple of years, the employment rate remained stagnant for the country. The government's initial economic growth target was 7.2 percent for 2013-14 fiscal year, which has became unachievable due to the recent unrest that disrupted most of the services. The World Bank predicts, coupled with the unrest, the weak manufacturing exports, lack of growth in the agricultural sector and the increasing domestic consumption and investment dem...

In today’s competitive corporate world, people are engaging themselves in a lot of work. At times, they find too little time to complete all of these tasks. Eventually work gets piled u p and becomes a huge burden. After a long and hard working day, when people realize that they have to wake up the next day to face more work, it affects their minds. It affects their concentration and causes problems in personal and professional life. That is why time management is a vital. No matter how talented you are, you cannot achieve success in the corporate world unless you learn how to manage your time. It depends on your daily schedule on how you are going to manage your time. At present, it might seem a difficult task and you might think, “I do not get a single second of rest in my entire day. How am I going to manage my time?” Trust me, it is not as difficult as it seems. In this article, you will find some guidelines on how to manage your schedule. If you ever find yourself in a situatio...

Doing business in Bangladesh Featured question of the month is - what does it need to launch an import-export business in Bangladesh? A bonus question to add with it is - how much time does it take to solve insolvency problems? Here is the hint, if not the whole answer: According to this website on 'Business Scenario of Bangladesh', six official documents are needed to start  an import-export business. How much required? $965. But the website did not mention how much bribe it requires. Answer to the other question is interesting. It takes over two years on solving insolvency problems. This time frame is not that long compared to Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and other developing countries. This website also gave details on leading and top businessmen of Bangladesh . The names included are Jahurul Islam of Islam Group, Samson H Chowdhury of Square Group, Abul Matlub Ahamed of Nitol-Niloy Group, Salman F Rahman of Beximco Group and Latifur Rahman of Transcom Group.

The government of Bangladesh has banned exporting of fundamental food - rice, soya bean oil, sugar and palm oil for three years. It also took decision to enhance pharmaceutical export. The amount to be used for this purpose is approximately sixty thousand dollar, which is twice of the previous limit that expired in June 2012. Due to this new policy, the sampling amount of the letter of credit has increased from 5% to 10% per year. An official from the ministry of commerce confirmed that this decision has been made after expert consultation of the corporate houses of the country and apex trade body - the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry and all the other necessary chambers and associations. The new policy includes some prerequisite conditions that need to be fulfilled by industries in order for them to gain access to utility services. Products such as petroleum, that fall under the energy and mineral resource category, however, are exempted from this, since...

The poultry trade of Bangladesh faced threat of survival quite a bit in the past few years, due to the continuous outburst of diseases like bird flu; it still is facing such crisis’s which is holding back the growth of the sector. According to Poultry Breeders Association of Bangladesh, the sector is facing bumpy competition that is causing an elevation in the level of difficulties for domestic poultry farms to prolong their business on an unrelenting basis. One of such which is the high level of interest rates for the credits taken from the local banks, which can rise as high as 18 percent. Some foreign investors have taken advantage of this situation and entered the domestic market through supplying of credits at rates as low as 5%. As per PBAB information, such firms have been able to already raise their shares up to 40%. The PBAB has discovered the reason to be lack of specific guidelines for the improvement of the sector.  The opportunity where it is equal for Bangladeshi or ...