Major updates 2015

No words today. Just take a look at these links which are self explanatory. HAPPY NEW YEAR! 

A YEAR OF MILESTONES 
This featured the Padma bridge, crossing lower-middle income landmark, forex reserves, Saudi opening doors to Bangladeshi manpower, trade route agreements, attaining the MDGs, etc.

Events that shaped global economy in 2015
Features here highlighted 11-year oil price low, Chinese currency in IMF basket, Asian infrastructure investment bank setup, the Greek crisis, Fed raising interest ratea, Myanmar's new stock exchange, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Act to liberalize commerce, Chinese growth slowdown, etc.

Toursim outlooks

Dhaka outshines its peers in hospitality market

Many a worry has been posed on the tourism of Bangladesh. Comparisons have been made with other countries with thriving Tourism and Hospitality industry. With last year's politically thwarted holiday season, all these woes were nothing but almost confirming evidence of the industry's struggling reality.

This season however, holiday businesses are looking confident again. A new report has already found Dhaka's average hotel occupancy to be the fastest growing hospitality market in the South Asian region. The region's occupancy average is 69% with an annual rate of return of US $153. A US based research group focusing on hospitality, Bangladesh has found to have outstanding potential for development in this sector.

Social media stats

70pc users spend more than an hour on social media: study

The vast world of social media is an infinite prospect for research. A fertile ground for social media in Bangladesh, businesses and investors are keen to learn the clockwork of this online space. In a recent survey, a Chinese mobile internet company took on local people's habits on online socializing. UCWeb, found that 70% of the 7,395 respondents spend more than 1 hour daily on social media. Of those, 23% spend more than 5 hours a day!

BPO Summit 2015

An opportunity worth billions
A novel conference was held in Dhaka on December 9-10, 2015. It was called the "Business Process Outsourcing Summit 2015". An industry which is still in its early stages in Bangladesh, has been acknowledged and has been emphasized through this conference. The participating speakers who are experts in their field, discussed scaling up the BPO industry to US $1bn by 2021. They called for a road-map with collaborations of the industry and related policy support to achieve this.

Government Incubator for Startups

CONNECTING STARTUPS

"Connecting Startups" is a competition to host the best startup in Bangladesh has been officially launched by the government to  initiate a startup incubator for the country. An absolutely critical initiative, Bangladesh government took up the huge worldwide startup trend to a serious business, by which it made a statement for Digital Bangladesh. Although startups can be broadly categorized as business and entrepreneurship ventures, "Connecting Startups" is under the official support of the ICT division, BASIS and BCC with infrastructural support from the High Tech parks. This translates into most upcoming businesses to adopt an increasingly digital space for their campaigns, which is why the involvement of such governmental departments.

Headlines Dec 13 - Dec 24

Welcome to our Headline post. A few articles from last two weeks have been featured. It seems that many interesting advances are happening right now in Bangladesh and some of them are also rightly acknowledged. Take a look for yourself.

Dec 13  :  Financial Inclusion reward! - Awards for engaging in school banking
Dec 14  :  Country of steel - Contrary to global market, domestic steel competitive
Dec 15  :  WB Economist speaks for Bangladesh - Acclaim of the "new Asian Tiger"
Dec 21  :  First Mobile Banking App - EBL
Dec 24  :  Social Media ban toll on mobile internet

Social Media ban toll on mobile internet

Facebook ban took toll on mobile internet

Status updates on mobile internet continue to make news as official accounts are taken after the resume of Facebook and other social media access. Preliminary estimates already fearing the worst, official estimates now state the 22-day social media ban has caused active mobile internet connections to dive to 5.14 crore in November. In the preceding month it was 8.63 lakh users and also on a rising healthy trend. Mobile internet users make up the numbers by purchasing daily or weekly internet packs, but the closure forced them to halt this habit. The top 3 operators saw their data usage statistics fall by as much as 30%.

BTRC: Internet users drop by over 7 lakh in November

The total number of internet users took a toll in November, dropping by 7.17 lakh. In October, it was 5.46 crore, but in November it stood at 5.39 crore, according to BTRC reports. Of total mobile internet users, the drop was 8.63 lakh, from standing at 5.23 crore in October to 5.14 crore in November. Some changes in statistics are as follows:

• October: Mobile internet users - 5.23 crore; WiMax users - 1.59 lakh; ISP and PTSN internet users - 21 lakh.
• November:  Mobile internet users - 5.14 crore; WiMax users - 1.54 lakh; ISP and PTSN internet users - 23 lakh.

First Mobile Banking App - EBL

EBL launches SKYBANKING

And finally, there is a mobile banking app! It seemed like it took its time though. As the country is experiencing a wave of technological reforms in many sectors, the financial industry is fast adopting many of its perks. Not that others won't follow soon, but Eastern Bank Ltd. is the first commercial bank to launch the country's first mobile banking app, named "EBL SKYBANKING".

This app features fund transfer, bills payment, to receive information about account, loan, card, ATM and branch locations. These services are available on the app which is available for Android at the moment. To access mobile phone top-up fund transfer, bill payment, account/loan/card information, mobile phone top-up, EBL ZIP and Benefit Partner Information, Positive Pay Instruction, Meet & Greet and other service requests, the users must register to an EBL outlet.

WB Economist speaks for Bangladesh

Bangladesh poised to be the next Asian Tiger

Bangladesh is a country on the "threshold of doing very well", said Kaushik Basu, the chief economist of World Bank who is currently on visit to this country. He also added of the possibility of Bangladesh becoming the "new Asian Tiger". He lauded the progress of several economic indicators namely per capita income, foreign direct investment and foreign exchange reserves; social  indicators are the significant poverty and mortality rate improvements. Mr. Basu furthermore highlighted pathways for improvement: infrastructure, ease of doing business, business ethos and providing training to workers.

Country of steel

Bangladesh's steel sector beating global market

Stark contrast to the world steel market, Bangladesh is doing really well with a 15% increase in the steel capacity last year. With large infrastructure projects, including bridges and other major projects the steel makers are supplying happily and expecting further growth at least in the next 10 years. 2015 promises the industry to grow from a current level of just below 1 million tonnes, to over 3 million tonnes. Over four decades, the production has multiplied many folds and is expected to double in 2022.

Financial Inclusion reward!

Bangladesh gets another award for financial inclusion

Bangladesh Bank (BB) has recently included almost 1 million school students under the formal financial system, through massive school banking initiatives. From 2010 onwards, Bangladesh Bank's programs for greater financial reach in the country enabled students to open Bank accounts with deposits as low as Tk 100 with no charges/surcharges for operation. While promoting Financial Inclusion as per the Prime Minister's vision for growth of the country, multi-stakeholder school banking was a massive success. This has been rewarded not only as sustainable development of the economy, but also formally by receiving Child and Youth Financial Inclusion Award (CYFI) 2015.

Headlines Dec 3 - Dec 9

Last week, we were given back our access of Facebook, renewed by the Government, after a lengthy block due to security reasons. Also, there were some important coverage of news around enterprise and society. Here are the posts.

Dec 3  :  Telecoms & e-businesses losing money due to Facebook block
Dec 3  :  RMG workers database
Dec 8  :  Sale Sale Sale! and E-commerce future
Dec 9  :  Trade and facilitation

Trade and facilitation

Exports accelerate to three-month high

Targeting to earn US$ 33.5 bn in the FY 2015-16, while already have earned US$ 31.2 bn in the last fiscal, Bangladesh’s export growth is on a 3-month high. In November, exports were US$2.75 bn. This was a 13.63% year-on-year growth, 16.7% higher than in October and unsurprisingly predominated by apparel.  The apparel sector has been shared the biggest portion of that amount, amounting to US$2.22 bn, which itself is up 23% from the preceding month and over 14% from last year. Despite this growth, businesses are cautious, not to take this growth for granted as recent buyer negotiations went through hiccups (cancelled Buyer’s Forum). Positive aspects are not afar, since depreciation will help the cause and hard work towards achieving better factory safety measures are continuously attempted.

Sale Sale Sale! and E-commerce future

Sales via Kaymu skyrocket

We all know about the famous Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, that mostly frenzy customers in the US, but the trend is maintained and is spreading world wide. Bangladesh, a charming economy eventually, but aggressively, catches on to any international trend. The electronic gadget industry, IT and now progressive business popularity of E-commerce is creating new era of business and trends. Thus, a few renowned E-commerce websites extended their services to adopt the Black Friday sale trend, and it absolutely caught on.

One such E-commerce platform, Kaymu.com, witnessed 800% hike in daily orders, with order count reaching six every minute for the particular 24 hours. The unimaginable and overwhelming response, Kaymu officials said, increased by 150% for visitor rate and 330% for conversion rate. Welcomingly, access to the website was near-to-half on handheld devices and through the app.

Telecoms & e-businesses losing money due to Facebook block

Facebook block hits telecoms and e-businesses hard

Previously we covered how F-commerce, or Facebook based business is being hurt due to government blockades of technology. Here are some newer highlights on the sector while the blockade continues, and continues to render facebook and e-businesses into loss-making sectors.

Bangladesh's mobile operators are losing Tk 1.5 crore daily as revenues from data services are down by 70% following the government's blocking of Facebook. Broadband service providers are losing Tk 40 lakh per day. Facebook-based businesses are losing Tk 2 crore each day. Check out the full story in today's Dhaka Tribune

RMG workers database

RMG factories asked to complete workers’ biometric database by December

The workers of RMG factories are to be taken through an IT exercise, when their personal records will now be stored electronically. Biometrics of the employees are to be recorded by December 31 and collected
for processing their benefits, compensations and employer-employee relationship. Their curriculum vitae would also be stored.

Headlines Nov 22 - Dec 2

Hello readers,

From the last Headline post, we have covered the well discussed social media blockdown and how it is hurting businesses, encouraging youth entrepreneurship and the banking fair amongst others. Look through to find your favorite piece!

Nov 22 :   Facebook closure and F-commerce
Nov 24 :   Youth Entrepreneurs Summit 2015
Nov26  :   The Banking industry and Banking Fair 2015
Dec 1   :   Dispute statistics in RMG
Dec 2   :   Car importers worry

Car importers worry

STRANDED CARS AT MONGLA PORT Barvida demands Tk2 lakh duty slab to release each of vehicles

The spotlight today turns to Mongla port where businesses are impeded due to bureaucratic government processes. Some 2,079 reconditioned cars remain stranded due to complexities in customs valuation and unauthorized import of more than five year old cars. Of them, imported between 2009 and 2013, a 1000 cars have been asked to be fixed a duty of Tk 2 lakh each, for their expedited release into the market. In addition to this, release also depends on meeting vehicle demand. The alternative was a counter-proposal to depreciate the cars at 95%, suggested by the Bangladesh Reconditioned Vehicle Importers & Dealers Association.

Dispute statistics in RMG

Apparel disputes arise mainly from wages: study

At a seminar on "State of labor tripartism in Bangladesh's garment sector and the scope of harmonious industrial and labor relations" at the Daily Star center, presented a study on the state of garments workers which reflected dispute reasons in the industry. It produced reports of almost 53% disputes arising from wage discrepancies. The dispute was with unpaid wages and overtime which highlighted the lion's share. around 19% of the disputes was also with a related category, namely salary and wage hike issues.