Home ›› 17 May 2021 ›› World Biz
Banks in Bangladesh are far away from modern financing products including pre-shipment financing, post-shipment financing, warehouse receipt financing, factoring, supply chain finance etc, stakeholders said at a webinar on Monday.
They lamented about the lack of certain financing tools in Bangladesh at the webinar, jointly organised by the International Business Forum of Bangladesh and the Bangladesh Enterprise Institute, on ‘Ease of Doing Business: Status of 2021’.
They also said that trade finance was an essential tool to enable the trade of goods, services to be sold on global markets as up to 80 per cent of trade is financed by some form of credit, guarantee or insurance.
Md Sirazul Islam, Executive Chairman of Bangladesh Investment Development Authority, was present at the webinar as a guest of honour. Jibon Krishna Saha Roy, Director (One-Stop Service and Regulatory Reform) of BIDA, presented the keynote paper at the webinar.
M Humayun Kabir, President, BEI, delivered the welcome speech in the webinar. MS Siddiqui, Economist & Vice President of IBFB, Muhammad Abdul Mazid, former secretary and Ex-Chairman, NBR and Chairman, Finance Committee at IBFB and AFM Matiur Rahman, Former Secretary and Vice Chairman, Industry Leadership Committee of IBFB spoke on the occasion.
Among others, M Harun-Ar-Rashid, Director of IBFB, M Shahjahan, Chairman of Chattogram Port Authority and Md Nazrul Islam, Executive Chairman, Bangladesh Export Processing Zones Authority spoke on the occasion as discussants.
Humayun Rashid, President, IBFB and Managing Director and CEO, Energypac Power Generation Ltd. was the chairperson of the webinar.
The speakers also talked about a perfect factoring for cross-border assignment of receivable. UN Convention on the Assignment of Receivables in International Trade, adapted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 2001, provides uniform rules for the cross-border assignments of receivables and to provide uniform rules to facilitate cross-border receivables financing. Bangladesh yet to sign the UN Convention on the Assignment of Receivables in International Trade.
Quoting a recent study, the keynote paper said services at Dhaka airport service were costlier than Kolkata and Colombo. Exporters need to find an alternate route of delivery of their garments to buyers in the west. The cargos are transported to Benapole Land Port from where Indian trucks carry those to Kolkata Airport, according to the press release.
National Board of Revenue decided to allow setting up private inland container depot under Dhaka Customs House to ease congestion at air cargo village at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport. The off-dock policy should be prepared by experts instead of officials of NBR. The proposed 100 Free Trade Zone may create an opportunity for competitive service to the exporters from within the country with the setting up of ICT service from all the proposed 100 Free Economic Zone of the country, it said.
The speakers also focused that Bangladesh must allow FDI in the logistic sector and amend the law and policy to this end.
