Some 150 agitating workers of closed Seasons Sweaters based in Ashulia besieged the BGMEA headquarters on Wednesday evening demanding back pay. The demonstrations forced the leaders of Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters' Association to sit with workers' leaders.
Both the garment exporters and labour leaders on Wednesday urged global buyers to be ethical in sourcing, and to give orders to those garment factories which comply with the rules of the buyer country. Such compliance, they pointed out, is a precondition for the sustainable growth of the readymade garment sector in the country.
Rerunning the futile exercise of setting maximum rates of sugar to keep its price in check, the commerce ministry Wednesday revised the rates for millers, wholesalers and retailers upward. The mill-gate price of the sweetener has been raised by Tk 6 per kilogram to Tk 45, while wholesale and retail prices have been upped to Tk 46 and Tk 48-49. The new pricing was decided Wednesday at a meeting between the commerce ministry and representatives of sugar refiners and trade bodies. ‘Sugar won’t be sold at more than Tk 50 from today,’ commerce secretary Firoz Ahmed confidently told reporters after the meeting.
The US company ConocoPhillips on Tuesday recommended to Petrobangla to designate a foreign country as ‘place of arbitration’ instead of Dhaka for dealing with any dispute with regard to production sharing contracts for two offshore blocks, officials said after the second day of negotiations. The company officials also wanted to know what would happen if Myanmar or India sent frigates to stop exploration activities on the blocks over the dispute over maritime boundary with Bangladesh.
International Monetary Fund lending could worsen the crisis in many countries, an independent think tank said on Tuesday in a report which the IMF dismissed as ‘seriously misleading.’ The Centre for Economic and Policy Research said that the IMF was promoting spending cuts that could exacerbate the economic downturn in 31 out of the 41 countries with current IMF loan agreements.
Global apparel machinery manufacturers and suppliers are hoping for a boost to their Bangladesh sales as knit industry here has been recovering from a belated impact of global recession that almost stymied their expansion, industry people said.
Two ships carrying 1,571 reconditioned vehicles have been waiting at the outer anchorage of the Chittagong Port for several days for berthing in the CPA jetties. The CPA could not give permission for berthing as the car Shed is already jam-packed with the imported reconditioned cars.
Commerce Minister Lt Col (Retd) Faruk Khan yesterday urged the German government to invest in renewable energy and river dredging sectors in Bangladesh. The minister made the request during a meeting with German ambassador in Dhaka Holger Michael at his secretariat office.
The government plans to float shares in the stock market for collecting Tk 200 crore to renovate the Dhaka Sheraton Hotel in view of competition from other five-star hotels in the country.
The core group of Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in the next Commerce Minister level meeting, to be held in Tanzania from October14 to October 16, will discuss duty and quota free access of LDC goods to US market.
