28 Nov 2014

Agrahayan 14, 1421 Safar 4, 1436 Regd No DA 6238 Vol 2, No 234

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2014 | www.dhakatribune.com | SECOND EDITION

20 pages plus 24-page weekend supplement | Price: Tk12

WEEKEND

7 | LONG FORM

11 | OP-ED

12 | SPORT

A TIMELINE OF INDIAN CLASSICAL ART

WHY ASIA IS ON THE BRINK OF A GOLDEN ERA

LOVERS OF WAR CRIMINALS

BCB, MUSHFIQ, SHAKIB PAY TRIBUTE TO HUGHES

Committee says Bheramara trip set off grid failure The whole process took just 14 seconds to transpire n Aminur Rahman Rasel Lack of coordination in the supply and demand of electricity caused the national grid’s frequency to drop, tripping the Bheramara sub-station and causing a cascade effect that rapidly shut the whole system down.

This was the conclusion contained in the 24-page final report of the Power Ministry committee to probe the November 1 blackout, submitted on Wednesday to the state minister for power, seen by the Dhaka Tribune. 

Power Ministry probe body submits 24-page final report



Makes 32 recommendations



No one blamed by report for black out





Grid frequency dipped to 45Hz, well below minimum India was supplying 444MW of electricity at the time

State Minister for Power Nasrul Hamid said the report would be formally announced at a press conference on Sunday or Monday.

The Dhaka Tribune was the first to report that the Bheramara sub-station had tripped causing the national grid to collapse on November 2. The findings of the Power Ministry investigation confirmed that this was the primary reason for the November 1 blackout.

According to the probe findings, the national grid failure commenced at

11:28am when the National Load Despatch Centre (NLDC) system frequency rapidly dropped to below 45 Hz, well beneath the minimum threshold of 48.9 – 51 Hz. On the day, the forecast demand was 4553MW and forecast power generation was 4674MW, but a sudden spike in demand caused the grid’s frequency to dip, ultimately causing the system to fall.

When frequency drops, voltage declines, and the low voltage registered at Bheramara sub-station caused it to trip.

Following this, one of the circuits connecting the Bangladeshi grid to Indian power supplies, Bheramara-Behrampur Circuit 1, also tripped.

At the time, India was supplying 444MW of electricity to Bangladesh.

The tripping of Circuit 1 caused a major deficit in supply of power to the grid, causing it to become unbalanced.

This imbalance, in turn, caused all the power stations in the country to shut down. The whole process took just 14 seconds to transpire.

The NLDC, the report said, was not able to foresee the spike in demand because the load calculation used to forecast demand is not done properly.

Simply put, the demand spike was not foreseen because November 1 a weekend, a Saturday, and NLDC load calculations assumed lower-than-weekday demand.

The report said under-frequency relay operations failed to automatically  PAGE 2 COLUMN 1

Law does not allow any structure within 20 feet of railway tracks. But a makeshift vegetable market sits within less than 5 feet of a track in Jurain in the capital

Handshake, signatures salvage Saarc n Tribune Desk A landmark electricity cooperation deal has been signed by the countries of South Asia amid fears that inter-rivalry squabbling between the area’s two nuclear-armed powers would dash hopes for an accord.

The Saarc Framework Agreement on Energy Cooperation (Electricity), aimed at trading electricity from one country to another and establishing trans-boundary power grids, was signed at the Summit that has just been concluded in the Nepalese capital.

The 18th Summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation

ended yesterday with the adoption of the 36-point Kathmandu Declaration.

Chair of the 18th Saarc Summit and Nepalese Prime Minister Sushil Koirala closed the summit in Kathmandu yesterday and declared that Islamabad would host the 19th summit in 2016.

The foreign ministers of the eight member countries signed the framework agreement at the closing session of the Summit.

The leaders of the member countries spoke at the inaugural session. Nine observers from China, USA, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Mauritius, Myanmar, Iran and the European Union also attended the Summit.

Nahid: If needed, Facebook, mobile will be shut down n Rafe Sadnan Adel Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid has given an innovative idea – blocking Facebook – to effectively prevent question leak during public exams.

In the face of widespread reports of question leaks since early this year, the minister even threatened to shut down mobile phone networks.

He thinks blocking Facebook could be an effective step as some yet unidentified groups or individuals have been spreading question papers before almost every exam these days through the popular social media site. Much earlier, question papers were found in exchange for money.

Addressing a meeting at the Secretariat yesterday, Nahid said the BTCL and other authorities concerned were asked to determine how this could be done under the purview of the laws.

“Culprits who leak questions will be punished by the Almighty, Insha Allah, and we will adopt a zero-tolerance policy against those involved in this act.

We are looking into complaints that the Primary School Certificate exam questions were found on some Facebook pages,” the minister said.

“It is not right to let the next generation’s future be ruined because of mobile phones. Look into the laws, if needed, we will keep shut mobile phones [network] during exams,” he added.  PAGE 2 COLUMN 6

But the power agreement almost failed to be agreed upon, as Pakistan held out on signing the regional electricity agreement.

Reuters reported that South Asia’s leaders applied pressure on Pakistan yesterday to salvage the summit by agreeing to the measures aimed at boosting trade among nearly a quarter of the world’s people.

For a time, it seemed that hopes of progress at the Saarc meeting in Kathmandu hinged on a morning retreat outside the mountain city yesterday, where leaders made their cases to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

n Asif Showkat Kallol

The government is set to receive on December 2 a report on a new cantonment and security installations, proposed adjacent to the Padma bridge project, from the Planning Commission and the engineering chief of Bangladesh Army.

The new cantonment will be built on one side of the Padma bridge while a state of the art surveillance station on the other at a cost of Tk1,774 crore over the next four years, according to official documents.

The construction will be carried  PAGE 2 COLUMN 5

SHAFIUL KILLING

Roles of Motihar OC, BCL leader Moon questioned Jamil Khan, n Mohammad from Rajshahi

When a policeman is helping an elderly couple cross a road in the capital’s Banglamotor intersection because they cannot climb up the foot-over bridge, a young man and woman try to slip through. Police however do not allow the young man pass MEHEDI HASAN

Nearly two weeks into the murder of Rajshahi University Professor AKM Shafiul Islam, law enforcers are nowhere near solving the case, instead several questions have been raised on the way investigation was going on.

Although the names of Jubo Dal leader Anowar Hossain Uzzal and Chhatra League leader Ibrahim Hossain Moon have come up repeatedly in connection with the murder mystery, Rajshahi police have been “mysteriously” inactive in rounding them up.

Moreover, the alleged role of the officer-in-charge of the Motihar police station, under which the area of the crime scene falls, have also raised a few eyebrows.

On Sunday November 23, arresting six people in Rajshahi and Dhaka, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) claimed that they had solved the murder mystery. They said a local Jubo Dal leader had masterminded the killing because the professor had “misbehaved” with his wife.

Several arrestees, including the main planner Manik, told media at the RAB headquarters in Dhaka on that day that they had carried out orders from Jubo Dal leader Pintu and his friend Uzzal and killed the professor.

They also said RU Chhatra League leader Moon knew that they were planning to kill the professor.

Although Rajshahi Metropolitan Police (RMP) was not convinced at first and had been saying that the  PAGE 2 COLUMN 1

Delayed Bibiyana plants fail to tap increased gas supply n Aminur Rahman Rasel An increase of 1082MW of electricity production, enabled by expanded supply at the Bibiyana gas field, has failed to materialise because three new power plants planned for nearby Habiganj are not ready yet.

Test transmissions of the expanded

supply of gas have started but none of the planned plants are ready. The three plants, which are in various stages of construction, will require approximately 200 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd) of gas.

US-based petrochemical giant Chevron recently completed the Bibiyana gas field expansion project, launched

two years ago, aiming to produce an additional 300mmcfd of gas.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is expected to formally inaugurate the expanded supply at Bibiyana gas field tomorrow.

The three power plants were supposed to have been partially ready last year and in full production by this year.

The plants are expected to help improve access to electricity, reliability and ensure quality supply to consumers. The cost of electricity will be slightly reduced.

A local private firm, the Summit Group, was awarded two of the three projects – Bibiyana 1 and Bibiyana 2 – with 341MW capacity each. The two

5 | News

9 | World

15 | Entertainment

B1 | Business

3 | News

A Dhaka court yesterday concluded recording depositions of prosecution witnesses in the sensational killing of Jahangirnagar University student Zubair Ahmed.

Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) yesterday launched a centralised database system for criminals. The database will generate 150 types of information about a person having criminal records.

Design of cantonment near Padma bridge next week

 PAGE 2 COLUMN 1

INSIDE

4 | News

RAJIB DHAR

Detectives arrested 31 members of eight dope gangs from different parts in Dhaka yesterday. They also seized huge amount of sedatives, flasks meant for serving tea, etc.

Despite a long unpleasant history, Indian PM Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Sharif shake hands in Kathmandu yesterday keeping hopes alive for the Saarc.

Shakib’s wife Shishir will be dazzling the audience along with Bollywood’s Malaika Arora Khan at the “Pond’s Presents The Lustrous Runway” at Radisson ballroom today.

Bangladesh would have to wait 10 more years than expected to graduate from the league of LDCs, as it still lags behind economic vulnerability and human assets index.

plants were supposed to begin operations by August 2013.

Bibiyana 2 plant is expected to start operations in March next year.

On the other hand, state-owned Power Development Board (PDB) was given the third power plant project, named Bibiyana 3, with a 400MW capacity.  PAGE 2 COLUMN 5

2

DHAKA TRIBUNE

News

Friday, November 28, 2014

Biswal arrives in Dhaka on a 3-day visit n Mohammad Al-Masum Molla Shortly after her arrival in Dhaka, United States Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Nisha Desai Biswal yesterday sat with politicians, businessmen, civil society members and diplomatic mission representatives in Dhaka.

The thanks-giving programme followed by dinner hosted and held at the residence of the US Ambassador to Dhaka Dan Mozena where Biswal reportedly said accountability, transparency and inclusiveness are must for development of any country.

She, however, reportedly did not make any comment on January 5 election, said a meeting source.

Awami League advisory coun-

cil member Muhammad Zamir, BNP leaders Moudud Ahmed and Abdul Moyeen Khan were present at the meeting.

Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) distinguished fellow Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya, civil society leader Farooq Sobhan, American Chamber of Commerce in Bangladesh President Aftab Ul Islam were also present.

Biswal arrived in Dhaka in the evening on a three-day visit after attending the 18th Saarc summit held in Nepal.

She is expected to hold meetings with the prime minister, opposition leader, government officials and business community leaders.

The US official is scheduled to attend a programme at Bangladesh Institute of Peace Support Operation Training (BIP-

SOT) in Gazipur today.

Biswal will meet the BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia today (Friday) at her Gulshan residence at 6pm, Sabihuddin Ahmed, adviser to the BNP chairperson, told the Dhaka Tribune.

Party’s Acting Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, Vice-Chairman Shamser Mobin Chowdhury and advisers to the BNP Chairperson Reaz Rahman and Sabihuddin will accompany Khaleda.

In the morning, Biswal is expected to hold a breakfast meeting with labour leaders at US Ambassador’s residence, said a labour leader seeking anonymity. America is the single largest export destination for Bangladeshi products.

In November 2013, she visited Bangladesh and stressed on dialogues be-

Handshake, signatures salvage Saarc  PAGE 1 COLUMN 5

Bangladesh confirmed a final push to convince Pakistan in time for the summit’s closing declaration later in the day.

Indian foreign ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin said several states were pushing hard for an agreement, Reuters reported.

An official in the Nepali delegation who was privy to the discussions said the focus was on winning support for the electricity pact, which aims to create a seamless power grid across South Asia, one of the world’s least integrated regions.

Cold shoulders and warm handshakes

India and Pakistan have been trying for years to reach a bilateral agreement for energy sharing across their heavily militarised border in Punjab, but the deal has faced resistance from Pakistan’s army.

After Thursday’s pact it was not immediately clear if the army was on board.

Despite a free trade pact in force since 2006, high tariffs and restrictions on movement mean trade among South Asian nations makes up just five percent of their total trade.

The electricity agreement will enable greater cooperation in the power sector among South Asian countries.

It is expected to improve power availability in the entire Saarc region and will facilitate the integrated operation of a regional power grid.

But the leaders of India and Pakistan were not reported to be particularly warm at the Summit.

A brief meeting between India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart on Thursday salvaged a summit of South Asian leaders, with all eight countries clinching a last-minute deal to create a regional electricity grid.

The pact at the summit’s closing ceremony in the Nepali capital, will buttress Modi’s ambition for South Asia to become a viable economic counterweight to China, which has made sweeping inroads in the region.

Modi shook hands with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at a mountain retreat outside Kathmandu and then again before the curtain went down on the conference. Television showed the two men smiling and exchanging a few words.

“Both are talking in a friendly man-

ner,” the Nepali prime minister told reporters, when asked if his country, as summit host, had helped break the ice.

Except for these brief exchanges, the two leaders had spent most of the summit cold-shouldering each other, however.

The idea of regional political and economical cooperation in South Asia was first raised in 1980 and the first summit was held in Dhaka on December 8, 1985, when the organisation was established by the governments of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

Since then the organisation has been expanded by accepting one new full member, Afghanistan, and several observer members.

The squabbling between India and Pakistan has held back Saarc for years, with the two sides’ disagreements preventing progress in the consensus-based association.

The grouping’s failure to foster closer ties over the past three decades has left the way open for China to step in, by helping to build ports and roads.

China is an observer at Saarc and

Committee says Bheramara trip set off grid failure  PAGE 1 COLUMN 2

cut the load and the NLDC was not manually able to use load management, commonly known as load shedding, because the whole process took place in such a small time span.

The eight-member probe body, comprised of a former Power Development Board (PDB) chairman and seven current government high officials, submitted 32 recommendations to avert similar shut downs in the future.

Md Shahinul Islam Khan, member of PDB (generation) and one of the eight members of the probe committee did not sign the report that was submitted because he is away on a trip to the United States.

Twenty-two are short-term measures and the rest middle- or long-term measures.

The committee visited the NLDC, the Hasnabad grid sub-station, the Bheramara sub-station, the Ashuganj, Haripur and Ghorashal power plants, and interviewed 13 power sector officials and several outside experts to prepare the report.

A day after the first deadline expired on November 6, instead of submitting a report, the committee submitted “primary information” about the blackout to the state minister for power and

sought a 10-day extension.

The committee completed its fact-finding on November 11. It said a detailed study on transmission fault analysis, protection system and restoration process should be carried out at later date.

Recommendations of the committee

The report did not name or blame any official or functionary for the black out.

The committee’s key short term recommendations include the update and maintenance of grid sub-stations and power plant equipment, especially transformers, circuit breakers, isolators, arresters, battery-chargers.

It said the scope of load control could be increased by adjusting the under-frequency relay settings to enable automatic load controls and by enabling Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition operations, a remote device management system.

It said relay settings had to be set-up between rental or quick-rental power plants and grid sub-stations.

The committee said digital fault and disturbance recorder’s clocks at grid sub-stations and power plants ought to be synchronised with GPS to enable near-real time observation of system difficulties.

It called for a technical team to study the reason for the High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) sub-station to trip, including looking into whether there are network setting problems.

Since its establishment in October 2013, the HVDC sub-station at Bheramara has tripped 8 times, including, most recently, on November 7, a week after the country-wide blackout.

The Power Grid Company of Bangladesh, the owners and operators of the national grid and the Bheramara sub-station, told the probe committee that a software problem could be the cause of the frequent trips.

The report recommended that the reasons for the frequent trips at the HVDC sub-station be determined with certainty.

It recommended that NLDC officials monitor the power plants on four sixhour shifts to ensure that the frequency is controlled, and that closed-circuit television cameras be installed at the NLDC office.

It called for the establishment of an advisory technical panel to make recommendations for the modernisation of the national grid.

Among the committee’s middleand long-term recommendations, was the creation of an independent system

Roles of Motihar OC, BCL leader Moon questioned  PAGE 1 COLUMN 6

professor’s ideological standoff with his pro-Jamaat colleagues was a main motive, on Wednesday, they said they were going to follow RAB’s theory.

Asked why they had not yet taken any action against Uzzal and Moon, Rajshahi Iftekharul Alam, assistant commissioner of RMP’s Detective Branch, told the Dhaka Tribune: “It is not true that we are not taking care of it. We are analysing the involvement of Uzzal and Moon with the murder. Once we find any link, we will take lawful action.”

RMP sources said they are now trying to find out if there is any link between the six Jubo Dal men arrested by RAB and the Facebook page of Ansar Al Islam Bangladesh-2, a cyber Jihadist group that claimed responsibility soon after the killing.

Two people have already been arrested in Bogra by RMP for their activities on the Facebook page, but RMP said there was a Jamaat leader behind the two. They said a former Shibir leader from the Azizul Haque College in Bogra was pulling the strings behind the page.

AKM Nahiduzzaman, deputy commissioner of RMP, told the Dhaka Tribune: “We hope to solve the murder

mystery once we get our hands on the Shibir leader in Bogra.”

Moon-rise

According to a number of witnesses and local people, the first person seen at the murder scene on November 15 was RU Chhatra League leader Masud Rana alias Bhagina Masud.

He is known as a close associate of another RU Chhatra League leader Ibrahim Hossain Moon, who now runs a Chinese restaurant near the Kajla gate of the university.

The Dhaka Tribune has learned that although they belonged to rival political groups, Moon had a really good relation with Uzzal and they were in the construction business together.

As a Chhatra League leader, Moon used his influence in the university administration to get orders for development work for Uzzal, who had the contractor’s licence.

This reporter found that both Uzzal’s construction business and Moon’s Chinese restaurant are located in the same building.

An official of the RU’s engineering department said Moon got the order for virtually every kind of development work on the campus from 2009-13. He

alleged that former RU chief engineer Abdur Rahim used to give him all the work in exchange for huge sums of bribe.

However, things changed after a reshuffle in the university administration in March 2013. Following the allegations of corruption, Rahim was removed from the post of chief engineer.

In July last year, he was replaced by Shirajul Monir, who refused to indulge in the corruption. In August this year, having failed to convince Shirajul, Moon even got the engineer allegedly beaten up Towhid Al Hossain Tuhin, the current secretary of the RU unit Chhatra League.

Tuhin could not be reached for comment. But, Mizanur Rahman Rana, president of RU Chhatra League, told the Dhaka Tribune that Tuhin had been suspended from the central committee for beating Shiraj up.

Another official from the RU administration told the Dhaka Tribune that Moon had a conflict of interest with the slain professor as well.

During a recruitment in the Sociology department, Moon wanted two of his favourite candidates selected. But Shafiul, who was then the chair of the department, did not heed Moon’s rec-

tween the political parties to resolve the political deadlock and to hold an inclusive, free, fair and acceptable election.

But the much-expected talks did not take place. BNP and many other political parties boycotted the January 5 election and 153 were elected uncontested.

In February, Biswal termed the January-5 election a “deeply flawed” one and said this could have serious ramifications for stability in Bangladesh and the region as the election did not credibly express the will of Bangladeshi people.

“Our interest in holding new elections is to ensure a free and fair process,” she said at the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in Washington in February. l

Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin promised $30bn for road building in the region over five years, and suggested increasing trade to $150 bn in the same period.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars and on Thursday, the worst militant violence in more than a year in the Indian part of disputed Kashmir killed ten people, including three Indian soldiers.

Transit is so restricted across the border that large volumes of Indian goods can only reach Pakistan via Dubai.

Last month, Pakistan agreed on electricity transit fees with Afghanistan, a step towards importing energy from Central Asia.

Indian Prime Minister Modi is keen to make South Asia a viable counterweight to China and on Wednesday warned that regional integration would happen “through Saarc or outside it.”

Modi announced an easier regime for business and medical visas and promised to lower India’s trade surplus.

Pakistan, which still refused to sign two other planned pacts to boost cross border road and rail traffic, was increasingly sidelined at the summit. l

operator over the power transmission system.

It called for all sub-stations and power plants connected to the NLDC to be linked up digitally to enable easy data storage and management.

The committee called for self-starting auxiliary power sources to be installed at the major power stations instead of the current grid-dependent auxiliary power system.

The Power Ministry probe body called for Electricity Grid Code 2012 to be effectively enforced with regard to transmission and for the draft Electricity Distribution Code to be finalised.

Md Kizir Khan, former PDB chairman and a member of the investigation committee, yesterday told the Dhaka Tribune: “We have worked on a very thorough report and I believe it should be published and circulated so that the public is aware of the situation.”

He also said: “Blackouts do take place, even in first world countries, and may happen again here. While one cannot absolutely rule out that it will happen again, the recommendations we have made will go along way to decrease the possibility that it will happen again soon.” l

ommendations.

Other sources said that was not the first time Moon had tried to influence teacher recruitment process at the university. He lost his edge quite a bit after the reshuffling in the administration.

Moreover, in 2011-12, Moon wanted the order for a Tk2 crore HEQEP work at the sociology department but he failed to convince Prof Shafiul.

A senior teacher of the department said: “Present Vice-Chancellor Muhamamd Mizanuddin, who is himself from the Sociology department, took stern action against Moon’s activities.

He also said: “It is very much possible for Moon to be involved with the killing. He has had good relations with Shibir activists since he became RU Chhatra League president in 2009.”

The Dhaka Tribune reporter managed to contact Moon over phone last night.

“I have not got any work order in the last two years. I used to do politics once upon a time. But now I am busy doing a PHD. People who do not like me have instigated journalists to write bad things about me,” he said.

Asked about his friendship with Uzzal, Moon said: “I have talked to Uzzal only once this year. He belongs to a

Design of cantonment  PAGE 1 COLUMN 6

out in two phases — before and after construction — because of the crisis of funds. It is likely to be built by June 2018.

The sudden increase in land prices around the Padma bridge site led to the decision that land acquisition would be in two phases.

Earlier, the Defence Ministry had sought Tk1,200 crore for the same cantonment but the cost has gone up since as have prices of land and construction.

It says 325.52 acre land — 75.75 acres in Mawa and another 249.77 acres in Jajira — is needed to set up the cantonment.

The Bridges Division has 115.52 acre land (15.75 at Mawa and 99.77 acres at Jajira) in possession from that acquired for the bridge project. It may be used for setting up the new cantonment.

Minutes of a meeting titled “Establishment of 99 Composite Brigade for Security and Technical Support of Padma Multi-purpose Bridge Project” revealed the decisions.

The meeting, presided over by Planning Minister AHM Mostafa Kamal, on November 12 saw top officials of the Bangladesh Army and the Bridges Division in attendance.

Four decisions were taken at the meeting regarding the cantonment when the Planning Commission and

the army’s engineering chief were asked to submit a report on design and estimated costs of the cantonment project on December 2.

It was decided that a composite brigade would be established with the least number of personnel on the least possible space.

The cantonment would have barracks for more than 3,300 soldiers, homes for 560 families of soldiers and 81 families of officers, an officers’ mess and a mosque.

In the meeting, the Bridges Division secretary said the Padma bridge construction site was around areas with high population density. As a result they had acquired as little land as possible.

The planning minister said the proposal to set up the new cantonment was not only related to the security of the bridge alone, but also of the country.

“We have followed the directives of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the line with our limited resources,” he told the Dhaka Tribune on Wednesday.

Hasina on September 19 last year inaugurated 99 Composite Brigade comprising 20 Engineering Construction Battalion, 58 East Bengal Regiment and 34 Bangladesh Infantry Regiment to monitor the implementation of the Padma bridge project and maintain security. l

Delayed Bibiyana plants fail  PAGE 1 COLUMN 6

Two years after signing a contract with Summit Group, the government cancelled the award of the Bibiyana 1 project because the company could not collect the necessary funds.

Following the cancellation of the Summit plant, the government decided to construct a plant on the proposed site renaming the project, Bibiyana South.

With an increased planned capacity of 400MW, the combined cycle power plant will be built by the PDB. The government will finance Bibiyana South using the Energy Development and Maintenance Fund. The fund was created by adding a surcharge to the price of electricity, to be used for the maintenance and development of power sector projects.

On July 7, 2014 the Cabinet Committee on Government Purchase approved a tender proposal for the 400MW gasfired Bibiyana South combined cycle power plant.

Isolux Ingenieria SA of Spain and Samsung C&T Corporation of South Korea got the job of building Bibiyana South as engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor.

“We hope we will be able to sign the companies as EPC contractors within 15 days,” Md Abdur Rouf, the project director of Bibiyana South, told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.

“After signing the EPC contract, the PDB will appoint an engineer to represent the plant’s owners to oversee the implementation of the project. The construction period for this project is 900 days, including a simple-cycle completion time of 720 days,” he said.

Bibiyana 2 power plant will come into simple-cycle operation from March 2015 and combined-cycle operation 10 months later.

“The construction work of Bibiyana 2 power plant is about to be finished.

We had hoped that the prime minister would have been able to inaugurate the power plant by now. But we could not complete it on time. This is our failure,” S M Noor Uddin, chief executive officer of Summit Bibiyana II Power Company Limited (SBIIPCL), said.

“The project, with one GE 9FA gas turbine generator, one heat recovery steam generator from Hangzhou Boiler

rival political group. Do you think it is normal for me to have good relations with him?”

Khairuzzaman Liton, president of Rajshahi city Awami League, admitted that Shibir had infiltrated their organisation.

Motihar OC’s role

According to witnesses, Motihar police station OC Alamgir reached the crime scene minutes after Shafiul had been attacked by the assailants.

A local resident said hearing the news of the attack, he went to the area around 3:15pm and found OC Alamgir there.

“When I wanted to know why this could have happened, Alamgir said the professor had been attacked because his personal life was full of mystery. He had good relations with many women,” the witness said, strongly requesting anonymity.

“Prof Shafiul was still alive when I asked him how he could be so sure about the motive. In reply, the OC said he had learned all those by visiting the spot,” the witness continued.

As of yesterday, RMP has not said anything in public about the role of the Motihar police station OC. l

Group and one steam turbine generator from Harbin Turbine Corporation, has a net capacity of generating 226.6MW electricity on natural gas in simple-cycle operation and 341MW in combined-cycle operation,” he said.

SBIIPCL, a company with 80 percent ownership by Summit Industrial and Mercantile Corporation (Pvt) Limited and 20 per cent by General Electric, LLC (GE), was selected by PDB to set up the project based on a competitive tendering process.

The project is being executed by SBIIPCL through a single EPC contract awarded to a consortium of two Chinese contractors – NEPC and CEEC. Power generated from the project facility will be evacuated through a 400kV overhead line and will be connected to a nearby 400/230kV substation of the Power Grid Company of Bangladesh.

The connecting 10 kilometre gas pipeline of 20-inch diameter from Bibiyana South pad to the receiving and metering station outside the plant boundary will be implemented by the PDB. On December 26, 2012, the PDB signed a deal with Marubeni Corporation of Japan and Hyundai Engineering & Construction Company of South Korea to build a 400MW-capacity power plant at Bibiyana 3.

PDB has made no progress on the Bibiyana 3 plant in the last two years, because its contractor failed to raise the project finance.

“Marubeni and Hyundai signed the agreement committing to arrange the finance from Japan Bank of International Cooperation (JBIC),” Saiful Islam Khan, project director of Bibiyana 3, told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.

“The JBIC has always said it was ready to provide the finance. But the project was delayed due to problems between Marubeni and Hyundai,” he said.

“We have already sent a proposal to the Cabinet Committee on Government Purchase to allow Marubeni to become the sole contractor in the project because Hyundai has withdrawn its share,” he said.

The committee has not yet approved Marubeni’s proposal to be sole contractor for the project.

“Marubeni has failed completely to secure the funds,” he said. l

Nahid: If needed, Facebook, mobile will be shut down  PAGE 1 COLUMN 1

Nahid said handing out suggestion papers to candidates with the claim of 100% guarantee would be outlawed, and those found guilty would face legal proceedings.

He also said anyone guilty of spreading any wrong information to confuse students would face punishment as well.

Education Secretary Nazrul Islam Khan said surveillance had already been ramped up at BG Press to check question leak.

The Education Ministry formed a 25-member committee headed by its additional secretary (administration and finance) to ensure that public examinations are held without any snag.

Officials of the Public Administration Ministry, BG Press, RAB and police attended the meeting.

The Secondary School Certificate and equivalent exams will begin from February 2 across the country. l

DHAKA TRIBUNE

News

Friday, November 28, 2014

3

FLOODGATE AT FARMGATE

Clockwise from left: Two traffic policemen check on a car trying to take a right turn in front of the capital’s Farmgate Police Box yesterday ignoring a signpost that prohibits such move at that point. At the end of the conversation, the traffic officials let the vehicle go. Taking the chance, another car follows suit MEHEDI HASAN

Prosecution testimony ends RAB: Tareq Sayeed in JU Zubair murder case among 27 involved NARAYANGANJ SEVEN MURDERS

n Md Sanaul Islam Tipu

A Dhaka court yesterday concluded recording depositions of prosecution witnesses in the sensational killing of Jahangirnagar University student Zubair Ahmed in January 2012 that sparked widespread protests for punishment to the killers.

Judge ABM Nizamul Haque of the Speedy Trial Tribunal 4 fixed December 7 for self defence of the accused.

Yesterday, DB Inspector Mir Shahin Shah Parvez, also the investigation officer, was cross examined by the defence. He testified as the last prosecution witness in the case.

A total of 27 out of 37 prosecution witnesses gave depositions in the case when it is alleged that many witnesses could not come to the tribunal out of fear since several accused remained fugitive.

The 13 accused in the case – all expelled leaders and activists of Bangladesh Chhatra League – were batchmates of Zubair. The victim was a former Chhatra League activist and a honours final year student of English department.

Taslima Yasmin Dipa, acting special public prosecutor of the tribunal, told the Dhaka Tribune that on the next day, the accused would place their submissions about the depositions of the prosecution witnesses.

“If the accused cannot not present

ACC interrogates ICSL managing director again n Tribune Report The Anti-Corruption Commission yesterday grilled the managing director of Ideal Cooperative Society Limited (ICSL) HNM Shafiqur Rahman again in connection with defrauding Tk1,000 crore from over 70,000 clients.

ACC Deputy Director Hamidul Hasan interrogated him at the anti-graft body’s head office in the capital’s Segunbagicha.

The ICSL had allegedly cheated people for 12 years from 2001 to 2012.

This came to the ACC’s notice last year.

Seeking anonymity, an ACC official told the Dhaka Tribune: “According to the commission’s primary inquiry, this group has liabilities of Tk945 crore to its clients in Dhaka and Comilla.

“Some irregularities have also been found in the group’s audit’s report.”

Several high officials of the ICSL were also interrogated in the case in the past.

ACC started its inquiry against ICSL on March 20 last year after allegations surfaced that the group had defrauded Tk284crore from its clients.

ICSL Managing Director Shafiq was first quizzed at the commission on November 20.

On September 2, the ACC interrogated the chairman and two directors of the firm. l

any approver [royal witness], then the prosecution and the defence will place closing arguments in the case. On completion of the arguments, the court will fix date to deliver judgement in the case.”

The same tribunal last year pronounced verdict in Bishwajit Das murder case sentencing eight Chhatra League activists to death and 13 to lifeterm imprisonment.

Zubair succumbed to his injuries on January 9, 2012 at United Hospital in the city. He was beaten and stabbed indiscriminately the previous afternoon on the campus by the accused and their aides.

The killers first took him to Enam Medical College Hospital in Savar and left him there with severe injuries.

Following the incident, the university authorities filed a murder case with Ashulia police.

On January 30 the same year, seven of the accused were expelled from the university for life, while six others suspended for two years after the authorities found their direct involvement in the murder.

Since the murder, the accused have allegedly been backed by former vice-chancellor Shariff Enamul Kabir.

He was forced to resign last year following mass protests by teachers and students.

Moreover, several prosecution witnesses in their depositions did not

mention the names of the accused, favouring the accused.

On February 23 this year, four accused fled from the courtroom in front of lawyers and police soon after court had cancelled their bails. Police are yet to arrest them.

Among the accused, those expelled for life are Khandaker Ashikul Islam, Khan Md Rois and Md Zahid Hasan of zoology department; Md Rashedul Islam Raju and Ishtiak Mehbub Arup of philosophy; Mahbub Akram of government and politics; and Nazmus Sakib Tanu of biochemistry and molecular biology department.

The six others are Md Mazharul Islam and Md Mahmudul Hasan Masud of history department; Md Kamruzzaman Shohag of philosophy; Shafiul Alam Shetu and Abhinandan Kundu of statistics; and Md Nazmul Hussain Plabon of the public administration department.

Two of the accused – Raju and Rois – made confessional statements before magistrate.

DB Inspector Shahin, who was then a sub-inspector of Ashulia police station, submitted the charge sheet on April 8, 2012. The accused were indicted on September 8.

According to provision, cases under the tribunal have to be settled within 135 working days. But a judge can extend the time citing proper reasons. l

n Tribune Report The investigation report, prepared by elite force RAB on the Narayanganj seven murders that found the involvement of 27 of its personnel with the incident, will be placed before a High Court bench on December 10.

Rapid Action Battalion submitted the report to the Attorney General’s Office on November 23. But the matter came to light yesterday.

The report will be submitted to the bench of Justice Md Rezaul Haque and Justice Gobinda Chandra Tagore.

Asked about the findings, a senior RAB official seeking anonymity said three sacked officials of RAB 11 had planned and executed the abduction and subsequent murder of the seven people.

A total of 27 RAB men including the sacked officials were involved in different stages of the incident. “The probe committee did not find the involvement of any official of the RAB headquarters or any other battalions with the crime,” the source said.

The three RAB officials – Lt Col Tareq Sayeed Mohammad, Maj Arif Hossain and Lt Commander SM Masud Rana – were sent to forced retirement on May 6. They are now in police custody.

The committee members talked to more than 100 RAB men during the investigation. They spoke to some eyewitnesses and family members of the victims.

Biman to go under strict surveillance to check gold smuggling

Planning minister elected for CRVS conference in Bangkok n Tribune Report

n Muhammad Zahidul Islam

Bangladesh is well poised to become a model country to develop a comprehensive and universal civil registry, Planning Minister Mustafa Kamal has said.

He was addressing the Ministerial Conference on Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) in Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok yesterday.

He was elected as the chair of the conference, a rare honour for Bangladesh and a testament to the impressive work that Bangladesh has put in to establish a robust and sustainable CRVS system.

Globally, CRVS has become an important issue for the post-2015 sustainable peace and development agenda. It deals with registration of vital events of a citizen’s life such as birth, death, cause of death, marriage, divorce and adoption.

Under the theme “Get everyone in the picture,” the five-day conference is co-organised by several UN agencies, the World Bank Group and prominent international civil society organisations.

The minister yesterday also held a bilateral discussion with the Indian state minister for home affairs. Both ministers agreed to enhance cooperation in the field of solar energy, wave energy and railway connectivity.

The week-long conference ends today. l

A high-level meeting of the Civil Aviation Ministry yesterday decided to bring the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport under constant close surveillance to prevent gold smuggling.

To this end, the meeting decided to instal more CCTV cameras in cargoes and hangers.

“Schedule is the main problem.

Though a Tk20 crore software package was procured more than three years back it had never been used. We have decided to introduce it by November 30,” Civil Aviation and Tourism Minister Rashed Khan Menon told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday after the meeting.

Some identified officials make between Tk10 and Tk50 lakh from every flight that lands from Dubai and Jeddah, said an official in the Biman. This is why they always want to manipulate the schedules at their will, he further added.

If there is a system operating it will be difficult for them to commit crimes and that is why they are always dead against installation of a software, he said.

Menon said they also decided to form a task-force to monitor the situa-

tion and it will also update the ministry time to time on their findings.

Earlier, the detectives detained five, including three Biman senior officials for their involvement in gold smuggling.

Opposition and independent lawmakers even walked out of the House in protest against a large amount of gold haul seized at the Shahjalal International Airport.

The legislators also demanded removal of board Chairman Air-vice Marshal (retd) Jamal Uddin Ahmed.

Jamal Uddin Ahmed attended yesterdays meeting. He declined to make any comment on the gold smuggling and corruption in the Biman Bangladesh.

He even refused to resign from his post, “I will resign if only the prime minister asks me to do so.”

Meeting sources said it also decided to send letters to the editors and news chiefs of newspapers and other media houses.

“We have sent the letters to the media houses requesting the editors not to make any report which will go against the national pride,” Mosharaf Hosen Khan, general manager (public relations) of Biman, said. l

The official said they visited the spots where the abduction, murder and dumping had taken place.

On June 4, the same High Court bench directed RAB, the government’s seven-member probe committee, the inspector general of police and the CID to submit their reports on the progress of their investigation into the killing incident.

‘The probe committee did not find the involvement of any official of the RAB headquarters or any other battalions with the crime’ On April 27, Narayanganj panel mayor Nazrul Islam and his four associates, and senior lawyer Chandan Sarker and his driver were abducted. Their bodies were later found floating in the Shitalakkhya River.

Tareq Sayeed is the son-in-law of Disaster Management Minister Mofazzal Hossain Chowdhury Maya, also the Dhaka city unit Awami League general secretary.

Nazrul’s father-in-law alleged that the RAB had abducted and killed the seven in exchange of Tk6 crore. l

High-level intel and police team in India to discuss militancy n Tribune Report A seven-member high-level intelligence and police team arrived in India yesterday on a mission to exchange information with their counterparts about Bangladeshi militants using India as a base of operations.

The team, led by DB Joint Commissioner Md Monirul Islam, will be in India until November 29.

Other members of the team are GM Azizur Rahman, additional deputy inspector general of Special Branch; Col Abu Hena Mostofa, director of National Security Intelligence; Lt Col Mohammed Abul Kalam Azad of the Rapid Action Battalion; Mahfuzur Rahman, assistant inspector general of police; Md Ashraful Islam, senior superintendent of police of the CID; and Maj Mohammad Atiqur Rahman of the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence.

The trip follows a visit made by India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) to Dhaka earlier this month.

The delegation will exchange information with the NIA about Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) activities in India in order to help India locate them, DB chief Monirul said.

The intelligence agencies of the two countries agreed to share information about militancy after the October 2 Bardhaman explosion that killed two suspected militants – Shakil Ahmed and Sovan Mandal – and left another, Hasan Saheb, injured. l

Warned by tribunal, Mizanul withdraws comment n Tribune Report A war crimes tribunal came down heavily on Mizanul Islam, a key defence lawyer representing Jamaat-e-Islami Nayeb-e-Ameer Abdus Sobhan, for criticising the country’s constitution during submission in the case yesterday.

Mizanul yesterday was placing closing arguments in the case against Subhan, who is facing nine charges of crimes against humanity committed in Pabna during the 1971 Liberation War. The defence lawyer was earlier warned by the tribunal several times for misconduct and also fined for his repeated absence during proceedings.

Latest on September 29, the tribunal 2 warned him of imposing fines for annoying the court.

Mizanul yesterday said: “I have completed my arguments. Before drawing conclusion, I want to say that the law tells about ensuring justice but the constitution bars to do so.”

Noticing his remark, Chairman of the International Crimes Tribunal 2 Justice Obaidul Hassan said: “You have said a terrible thing. The constitution is written at the cost of millions of martyrs who sacrificed their lives during the 1971 Liberation War. It reflects thoughts and opinions of the people and their elected representatives have formulated constitutions.”

Mizanul then acknowledged that he

had uttered something “terrible.”

The tribunal chairman asked a bench officer to bring a copy of the constitution. Then he read out the preamble of constitution. Mizanul drew attention of the tribunal to article 47 (A) of the constitution.

Justice Obaidul said: “Yes, it says if anyone commits such and such offences, then certain rights will not be applicable for him. The constitution may deprive you from enjoying some rights but you cannot make such comment on the constitution. We will take action against you.”

Mizanul instantly said: “My lord, I am withdrawing my speech.”

Another member Justice Md Shahinur Islam said: “You should not have said this.

You have made an extreme comment.”

The defence counsel then said: “My lord, this is perhaps my last argument before this tribunal. My prayer to the tribunal is that my 85-year-old client gets justice.”

Justice Obaidul said: “Justice is a right for everyone. He [Subhan] will get justice as per his rights. We are sitting here to uphold justice.”

The case proceeding was adjourned until Sunday when the defence will submit on the legal aspects.

The accused was indicted on December 31 last year. He faces different allegations including involvement in the killing of 400 Hindus. l

4

DHAKA TRIBUNE

News

Friday, November 28, 2014

RAB launches database for criminals n Tribune Report

Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) yesterday launched a centralised database system for criminals.

The database will generate 150 types of information about a person having criminal records.

It will store information on some 40,000 criminals active throughout the country.

State Minister for Home Affairs Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal yesterday inaugurated the database system in the headquarters of the elite crime busting force RAB at Uttara in the capital.

Inspector General of Police Hassan Mahmood Khandker was present at the programme.

The preserved information about a person will be included name, addresses, eyeballs, fingerprints, face shape, domicile and details provided in the national identity card. The RAB will collect information about a person

once caught by them. The database system was first initiated in 2011.

Since then the battalion officials have visited 64 jails across the country and collected details of convicted people in criminal offenses, said RAB Legal and Media Wing Director Mufti Mahmud Khan.

The database will help law enforcers to catch criminal from anywhere in Bangladesh.

Once the aforesaid information is collected lawmen can identify professional criminals if they commit any crime after securing bail from court, said the battalion official.

Inaugurating the database, Asaduzzaman Khan said the system would help curb crimes and the criminals will also think about twice before they commit crimes as they would know their detailed information is stored.

Asaduzzaman Khan, the state minister, said the government had taken initiatives to recruit 50,000 more po-

licemen to keep the order.

The formation of a special unit under police is underway to curb cyber crimes, he added.

The battalion officials said there would be separate code for every criminal and law enforcers would easily be able to find out the details after logging on with the code.

When professional criminals are caught by lawmen, they usually provide fabricated information during interrogation making it difficult for the law enforcers to unearth the real incident.

But the lawmen can easily identify criminals and unearth any incident using the digital database, said RAB officials.

The database has already been linked with the NID database for perfection and RAB will also link it with MRP (Machine Readable Passport) and BRTA’s digital license and registration databases. l

A mobile court removes wooden structures, on which traders had been running makeshift shops in the capital’s Farmagte area for long, as part of an eviction drive led by the Dhaka City Corporation yesterday SYED ZAKIR HOSSAIN

UK changes transit rules Speakers stress knowledge and for Bangladeshis needs on climate change projects n Tribune Report From December 1 Bangladeshi nationals willing to transit through the United Kingdom to other countries will have to follow a new set of guideline, says a press release.

In the release issued yesterday, the British High Commission in Dhaka said the changes were a good news for Bangladeshi nationals.

From now on, Bangladeshi nationals holding visas of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US will be able to transit through the airside to go anywhere in the world without requiring any UK visa.

For those who would require a visa for the airside transit, the fee

Construction worker dies after falling from building in capital n Tribune Report A construction worker died after falling from the fifth floor of a 12-storey underconstruction building in the capital’s Gulshan area yesterday.

Md Rezaul, 28, fell down when he was setting up rods at the floor of the building named Kohinul Apartment.

Rezaul’s colleague Mithu Molla said: “We were working on the same floor. Suddenly, we heard a scream, and noticed that Rezaul fell from the floor.”

He was rushed to Dhaka Medical Collage Hospital where doctors declared him dead around 10:45am.

Gulshan police station Sub-Inspector Asaduzzaman said the autopsy report will reveal whether he fell accidentally or someone pushed him.l

Accidents kill one in Ctg, injure two n Tribune Report A man was killed and two others were injured in separate accidents in Chittagong city’s Halishahar and Dewanhat areas yesterday.

Nayek Jahangir Alam of the CMCH police outpost said a truck hit Shahjahan and Mizan near Tasfia Community Centre of Halishahar area while they were crossing road.

CMCH doctors declared Shahjahan dead, he said.

Meanwhile, Jibon Das, a sweeper, was hit by a train in Dewanhat area in morning and lost his left leg.

He was undergoing treatment at the CMCH, said Nayek Bashar. l

has already been reduced to £30 and its validity has been extended to two years.

However, for the landside transit, a valid Visitor in Transit Visa or one of an expanded list of approved exemption documents will be needed.

British High Commissioner in Dhaka Robert W Gibson said: “The changes to the UK’s transit regime show the UK is open for business.

Our world class airports and airlines continue to be competitive and attract international travellers and business visitors, including from Bangladesh.”

For the latest guidance on UK visa requirements, visit www.gov.uk/checkuk-visa. l

n Tribune Report Speakers at a workshop yesterday stressed the need for taking in view locals’ knowledge and needs while initiating and implementing any project to tackle climate change effects in the country.

It was necessary to make a project sustainable, they said at the inception workshop on “Ecosystem-Based Approaches to Adaptation in the DroughtProne Barind Tract and Haor area”.

Centre for Global Changes Executive Director Dr Ahsan Uddin Ahmed said: “In most cases, the government does not consider locals’ knowledge and needs while taking up development projects for any particular region and

so such projects end up unsuccessful.”

Citing 30 agro-ecological zones in the country, he said the government should consider crops varieties and landforms in implementing any agriculture projects there.

As for drought-prone Barind Tract and Wetland “Haor”, he said, the situation is more critical as those areas are respectively considered as less rainfall and highest rainfall areas.

The Department of Environment organised the workshop at the conference room of the Rural Development Engineering Centre in the capital.

According to the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Bangladesh is one of most vulnerable countries in terms of climate change

effects, including salinity intrusion, drought and high frequency of tidal surge.

These effects will reduce the country’s agricultural output as well as hampering people’s livelihood, said the leading international body for the assessment of climate change in its several reports.

Bangladesh government has already developed several paddy varieties, which are tolerant of extreme climatic events like drought, salinity and submergence.

A IPCC panel scientist from Bangladesh, Ahsan Uddin Ahmed suggested introducing such paddy varieties among the farmers vulnerable to climate change effects immediately. l

AL central committee meeting today n Tribune Report With Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the chair, the central working committee of the ruling Awami League will hold its meeting at the Ganabhaban, official residence of the Prime Minister, at 7pm today.

In the meeting, Hasina might call upon her party members to refrain from making any remark regarding the expelled minister Abdul Latif Siddique who was recently sent to jail for making derogatory comments over Hajj and Tabligh, a member of the central committee told the Dhaka Tribune.

The meeting is expected to discuss strategies to foil the upcoming agitation announced by BNP spokesman Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, he said. l

DHAKA TRIBUNE

News

5

Friday, November 28, 2014

Dope gangs busted in capital Detective Branch of police arrests 31 gang members, seizes large amount of sedatives n Tazlina Zamila Khan Detective Branch of Police arrested 31 members of eight dope gangs from different parts in Dhaka yesterday.

The detectives also seized huge amount of sedatives, flasks meant for serving tea, pickles, biscuits and Tk50,000 in cash from their possession, said sources in the Dhaka Metropolitan Police.

During the drives, separate mobile courts led by executive magistrates Abdul Kuddus and Sarwar Alam sent the arrestees to jail on different terms, they said.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner Masudur Rahman said the arrestees were involved in looting valuables from the people in the capital.

The gang members had different tasks in the looting process. Some of them used to bring the area under their watch, while some others were responsible for mixing the drugs in the foods served to the persons whom they used to make their targets, he said.

In the primary interrogation, the arrestees confessed to their involvement in the crime, he added.

According to the DB sources, the gang members used to set up makeshift shops like tea stalls, cigarette stalls or soft drinks stalls in different areas, including railway station, bus station or footpaths.

After finding their targets, they used to mix dope drugs with tea, banana, or other food items served to the targeted persons, they said.

Later, they used to loot the victims’ belongings, including cash taka, laptops, mobiles, gold chains, as the victims become fainted after taking the foods or drinks, they added.

During the recent Eid, two people were killed after falling victim to the members of the dope gangs.

In the yesterday’s drives, the DB officials at first arrested one Mizanur Rah-

18 persons and eight shops fined in Chittagong n FM Mizanur Rahaman Eighteen persons were fined for smoking in public and three restaurants and four shops were fined for selling products without legal documents, in Chittagong yesterday.

Executive Magistrate Suraiya Akhter Sweety and Assistant Commissioner of Chittagong District Administration Abdullah Al Mansur led the drives.

The court led by Magistrate Suraiya Akhter fined 18 persons for smoking in the Chittagong Medical College Hospital area. The other court fined three restaurants Tk70,000 for selling food in unhygienic environments and Tk20,000 to four iron and rod-cement shops for selling constructing materials without obtaining license from authorities concerned.

The court also fined a gold jewellery shop with Tk5,000 for using a faulty weighing scale. l

WEATHER

DRY WEATHER LIKELY DHAKA TODAY TOMORROW SUN SETS 5:10PM SUN RISES 6:23AM FORECAST FOR TODAY 28 28 27 25 28 28 27 28

17 18 13 15 13 15 15 18

YESTERDAY’S HIGH AND LOW

29.2ºC Cox’s Bazar

10.8ºC Chuadanga

Source: Accuweather/UNB

PRAYER TIMES Fajr Sunrise Jumma Asr Magrib Esha

man, owner of Gausia Pharmacy, from Fakirapul area, the DB sources said.

In the primary interrogation, Mizan confessed to his involvement in supplying sedatives to many dope gangs in the capital, they said.

On the basis of the information provided by Mizan, the DB conducted drives in different areas, including Fakirapul, Gulistan, Kalshi of Mirpur, Kamlapur, Mohakhali and Uttara, they added.

5:03am 6:21am 11:46am 3:34pm 5:10pm 6:30 pm SourceL IslamicFinder.org

Of the arrestees six members of Shariful group were arrested from Fakirapul, five members of Jahid group from Gulistan, six members of Sumon group from Airport intersection, four members of Mamun group from Kalshi of Mirpur, four members of Jalil Bepari from Kamlapur and five members of Maola group from Mohakhali bus stand.

Most of the arrestees were held earlier by the law enforcers for sever-

al times. But they got involved in the same crime after getting release.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police Joint Commissioner Monirul Islam said Jalil was arrested for 11 times, Mizanur for three times, Maola for seven times, Oli for three times, Shariful for three times, and Jahid for two times before their yesterday’s arrest.

The arrestees are: Mizanur Rahman Pintu,42, Jalil Bepari, 55, Rashid,42,

DHAKA TRIBUNE

Babu, 32, Kamruzzaman,25, Jahid,22, Niamul Hauqe, Khokon Mia, 23, Moslem Molla,35, Alom, 22, Mizanur,42, Sariful,48, Sanowar,35, Rezaul,40, Osman Goni,25, Lal Mia, 45, Gias Uddin,25, Mamun,40, Shahid Ahammed, 26,Ferdous, 25, Abu Taher, 28, Moksed Molla, 40, Sumon, 23, Babu, 18, Abdul Kader, 40, another Sumon,25, Maola Sarder, 28, Md Oli, 18, Aminul Islam, 25, Joni, 19, Shaon Ahmed, 18. l

Forty-five employees of Partex Denim, a major garment manufacturing unit of the Partex Group, have been arrested from their residences during the early hours yesterday for their alleged involvement in a land grabbing case.

Around 2:30am, more than 100 men in police uniform and plain clothes, entered the factory in Gazipur, said Deputy General Manager of Partex Denim, Nizam Uddin.

Later, they broke into the dormitories of the employees of the factory nearby and arrested 45 employees including engineers, security staff and labourers, he said.

The 45 employees of the Partex Group were detained for grabbing a piece of land in the Bangla Bazar area of Gazipur. Akram Hossain, a former Superintendent of Police was the owner of the hundred acres of land in the area, said Joydebpur police station Officerin-Charge Khandaker Rezaul Hasan.

Partex authorities had claimed that they had bought the land from Akram in 2003, whereas, Akram had died in the year 1997, he said.

Zakaria Hossain, a businessman had filed a complaint against 19 identified and 125 unidentified employees of the Partex Group including its Vice-Chairman Aziz Al Kaiser and Managing Director Shawkat Ali Rasel on Wednesday.

He claimed that the land which the Partex authorities were trying to snatch belonged to him.

When contacted, Estate Officer of Partex Denim Mostafa Al Kamal said the Partex Group had purchased around 27 acres of land from Akram Hossain but one Zakaria Hossain had been claiming that five acres of the land belonged to him.

“We have legal documents of the ownership of the land, but police arrested our employees late into the night, breaking into their dorms,” he said. l

Huge explosives, arms recovered from a Chittagong college dorm

BR official's illegal structure on railway land demolished

n Tarek Mahmud, Chittagong

A mobile court yesterday demolished an illegal tile storehouse, set up by an official of the Bangladesh Railway (BR) East Zone within the premises of the bungalow allotted for him in the MA Aziz Stadium area.

The mobile court led by Assistant Commissioner and Executive Magistrate Rakib Hasan of the Chittagong district administration demolished the go-down located behind the bungalow of Jamal Uddin, deputy financial adviser (pension) of BR (East) and acquired 0.3 acres of land , said BR (East) Divisional Estate Officer Abdul Bari.

Bari said the drive started around 10:30am and ended around 1pm while BR (East) State Officer Md Jasimuddin and other BR staff assisted the mobile court.

Police during a raid seized a huge number of crude bombs, bomb-making materials and lethal weapons from two hostels of Chittagong Government College.

The law enforcers also arrested a person identified as Mohiuddin Masud, 22, a resident of Suhrawardy hall, said Deputy Commissioner of Chittagong Metropolitan Police (south zone) Kamrul Amin.

Joynal Abedin, a student of history department of the college, told the Dhaka Tribune that about 30-35 Shibir men confined him and three others of his batch mates – Wahed, Nafis and Sanjoy Chakma – into a room of Suhrawardy hostel around 11:30am as

they were members of the Bangladesh Chharta League.

“The Shibir men also beat us indiscriminately,” he said. He said later they

'The two hostels are Shibir dominated and the hostels are being used as a den of Shibir men' managed to phone their friends and informed them about their captivity.

On receiving information, police conducted raids at Suhrawardy Hostel and Sher-e-Bangla hostels.

“Sensing police raid, Shibir men but

Masud freed the four and fled away,” said DC Kamrul. “As all of the rooms are locked, we broke doors of each room and found 16 crude and patrol bombs, three kilograms of explosive powder for making crude bomb, 26 machetes, five kilograms of brick chips, huge number pots used for making crude bombs, several pairs of gloves, rods and sticks in a room.”

The CMP Assistant Commissioner (Kotwali circle) Shah Mohammad Abdur Rouf said the two hostels are Shibir dominated and the hostels are being used as a den of Shibir men.

Acting Principal of Chittagong Government College Professor Jesmin Akhter said they had sought police assistance to keep congenial atmosphere on the campus. l

n Tribune Report

Magistrate Rakib said the official had illegally rented out the yard of his house to a tile shop owner.

“The official had been served notice six times asking him to remove the storehouse from his yard while latest notice was sent to the official three days ago, but he had not taken any action according to the instructions sent,” he said.

“All the tiles stored in the warehouse were destroyed during the drive,” Bari said adding that departmental action against Jamal Uddin as per the law was recommended to the higher authorities.

Earlier, the court conducted another drive in a different area near Central Railway Building (CRB) where illegal structures, including 13 shops, were demolished from one acre of railway land. l

Five-day Jor Ijtema begins in Tongi n Our Correspondent, Gazipur

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 28

Dhaka Chittagong Rajshahi Rangpur Khulna Barisal Sylhet Cox’s Bazar

Thirty-one members of eight dope gangs held from different parts of Dhaka yesterday presented at the Detective Branch headquarters in the capital

45 employees of Partex Group held over land dispute n Our Correspondent, Gazipur

The five-day Jor Ijtema, a preparatory gathering of Bishwa Ijtema, begins today at the bank of River Turag at Tongi in Gazipur.

Thousands of devotees from home and abroad are now gathering at the east side of the Turag.

Mawlana Gias Uddin, a senior devotee said the number of pilgrims would be higher for the next Bishwa Ijtema.

“We are gathered here to offer our services for the main congregation. Devotees are coming from all corners of the country and the world. Arranging the Bishwa Ijtema takes a lot of voluntary work.”

He, expressed discontent over the fact that Muslims from five countries would not be able to attend the Bishwa Ijtema because of a government ban on visas for nationals of those countries due to the Ebola crisis.

Meanwhile, shop owners of the area alleged that three powerful groups in Gazipur have been extorting money from them in the name of Ijtema.

Shops at Abdullahpur, Mill Gate and Kamarpara are forced to pay from Tk2000 to Tk10,000 to those politically affiliated groups.

The first phase of Bishwa Ijtema 2015 is scheduled to begin on January 9. l

Pilgrims must register online to attend hajj next year n Tribune Report Every Muslim intending to perform Hajj next year must complete registration online.

“The Bangladesh government introduced the system in keeping with the regulations and guidelines of Saudi Arabia Hajj authority,” said Religious Affairs Minister Motiur Rahman at a meeting at the secretariat yesterday.

He said the Hajj packages would be confirmed by December 8 and Hajj fees would have to be submitted between December 15, 2014 and January 30, 2015.

The minister hoped that the online registration system would do away with the hassle and corruption in the sector.

This year 98,605 Muslims had performed Hajj from the country. l

Flower sellers return to the same spot on a footpath in the capital’s Shahbagh area from where they were evicted by the Dhaka City Corporation five days ago. The photo was taken yesterday MEHEDI HASAN

3 burnt in transformer blast in city n Tribune Report

An electrician and two of his helpers sustained burn injuries in a transformer explosion at the office of Dhaka Electric Supply Company Limited (Desco) in the capital’s Mirpur area yesterday.

The victims – Rakibul Hossain, 26, Sajjad Hossain, 18, and Jony, 18 – are

undergoing treatment at the burn unit of Dhaka Medical College and Hospital (DMCH).

Among them, Rakibul sustained 76% burn injuries while his helpers, Sajjad and Jony, sustained 22% and 26% burn injuries respectively.

Rakibul’s condition was deteriorating, said a physician at the DMCH.

The incident took place around 11am when the electricians were at work inside the Desco office in Mirpur.

“Some liquid substances seeped through the transmitter and created the blast injuring the victims,” said Inspector Mozammel Haque, camp incharge of DMCH outpost. l

6

DHAKA TRIBUNE

Nation

Friday, November 28, 2014

WDB project shows Meghna River’s tributary as canal

Executive engineer blames local union parishad chairman for the mistake a bridge over the tributary and sent a proposal to the Climate Trust any cost.” Water Development Board n Our Correspondent, Narsinghdi building Fund, saying it requires to build a flood Executive Engineer Md Abul Hossain from its Kheyaghat to Bottoli point.

A Meghna river tributary has been passed off as a canal in a project proposal to build a flood control dam over it in Narsinghdi’s Raipura upazila.

The Water Development Board (WDB) prepared the proposal and sent it to Climate Change Trust to approve it. According to the project, the dam will be built over the tributary by filling it with soil from Bottoli to Kheyaghat point, which is known as Kuthir Gaang.

Locals, especially farmers feared that their cultivation would be heavily affected if this project was implemented.

They have long been calling for

Late Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, who was LGRD and Cooperatives minister of the BNP-led 2001-2006 government, promised to build the bridge over the tributary.

Accordingly, a project was prepared and tenders were invited for it, but it got stuck during the military-backed caretaker government and it still has not seen the light of the day.

Former Posts and Telecommunication Minister, now an MP, tried to revive and implement the project in 2009, but he failed to do so for unknown reasons.

Officials from the Water Development Board visited the site recently

control dam over the “canal” to check climate change effects in the locality.

Kuthir Gaang, a Meghna tributary, has been shown as a canal in the project.

The project cost has been put up at around Tk25 crore to protect the assets of Tk more than 239 crore.

The outlay for erecting the flood control dam, closures and protecting its slope has been estimated at Tk around 23 crore.

Amirganj Union Parishad Chairman AKM Fazlul Karim Faruk said it is in no way acceptable to show the tributary as a canal in the project. “We, the locals, will resist implementing this project at

said he was not aware whether this was a canal or a tributary and so he had talked to Chararalia Union Parishad Chairman Nuruzzaman Sarker about it.

He blamed the chairman for passing off the tributary as a canal, adding: “The project has already been approved and we will soon receive the money for implementing the project.”

Chararalia Union Parishad Chairman Nuruzzaman Sarker said he just said this project would now be cancelled now since people were protesting against it. State Minister for Water Resources Md Nazrul Islam Hiru said: “I will look into this.” l

Coal crisis worries Jessore brick kiln owners n Our Correspondent, Jessore Brick kiln owners in Jessore say they might face heavy losses if hit by unavailability of coal during the peak season.

Leaders of Jessore Brick Kiln Owners’ Association are concerned that as many as 170 kilns could face closure if coal is not supplied from Barapukuria coal mine soon.

Addressing a press briefing at Jessore Press Club yesterday, leaders of the association said there has yet been no supply of coal from Barapukuria coal mine even though the peak season to make bricks has already come.

Youth held for blackmailing girl after rape n Our Correspondent,

Attack on villagers by policemen protested n Our Correspondent, Jessore

Chapainawbganj

Residents of two villages in Jessore Sadar upazila yesterday formed a human chain protesting police’s baton charge on some people of the villages.

Awami League Jessore Sador upazila unit president Mohit Kumar Nath, its general secretary Mehedi Hasan Mintu, and some villagers of Sirajshingha village and Daharsingha villages took part in the human chain in front of Jessore Press Club.

According to the protesters, police charged baton on some villagers on Monday night when a team of police went to Sirajshingha village to arrest some people accused in a case filed over a piece of land.

Police, however, said the villagers attacked the law enforcers when they tried to arrest the accused in the case. l

Rapid Action Battalion arrested a youth in the district yesterday for blackmailing and threatening a girl after harassing her sexually.

Sources said Razu alias Rajon of Naldanga village in Shibganj upazila took the girl forcefully nearby mess on 19 November and raped her. He also recoded the obscene with his mobile. He threatened the girl if she exposed the incident, he will post the scene on face book.

Later, Rajon blackmailed the girl and took money from her several times. On 25 November, he sent a mobile message to her parents asking Tk2 lakh mentioning if they failed to meet his demand, he will release the scene in internet.

The parents informed the incident to RAB. The law enforcers conducted a drive in the area and arrested him tracking the mobile call. l

Robbery at Naogoan

Five injured in AL factional clash n Our Correspondent, Savar At least five people were injured in a clash between two factions of local units of ruling Awami League in Chapain area of Savar yesterday.

The factions led by AL Savar Sadar Union unit president Nurul Amin and its general secretary Sarwar Hossain locked in the clash following an internal feud over forming new a committee. l

n Our Correzpondent, Naogaon

Farmers have lunch in a field as they do not have time to go home. The farmers of Rajshahi region have to remain busy throughout the day as paddy harvesting and potato cultivation are going on in full swing. The picture was taken from Baya area under Poba upazila yesterday Azahar Uddin

Teacher crisis hits Mahbubur Rahman Government College n Our Correspondent, Noakhali Educational activities as well as administrative functions are being badly hampered because of crisis of teachers and staff at Chatkhil Mahbubur Rahman Government College in Noakhali.

A total of 10 out of 22 posts, including assistant professor and lecturers, have been lying vacant for long time.

The post of the principal has been remained vacant for the last 10 months and Vice-Principal AFM Ruhul Amin is performing as acting principal there.

“I am struggling to keep discipline on the campus as the college does not have sufficient teachers and staff.”

One post is vacant against the two

The written speech was read out by the association’s general secretary Kazi Nazer Ahmed Munnu at the briefing.

Kiln owners said they would import coal from India but are unable to do so now because an Indian court has ordered to stop exporting coal.

We cannot use wood as alternative fuel in making bricks as nearly 120 kilns in the district were constructed using the zig-zag technology in compliance with a directive of the Ministry of Environment and Forests, they said.

The speakers called on the government to take effective measures in order to help them avoid possible financial losses. l

posts in Bangla, economics, political science, history, accounting and management departments. Besides, two posts of lecturers at Islamic history and one post at agricultural studies department have been remained vacant for over five years, he said.

A teacher of the college said: “I am working here as a lecture for last four years. I have to remain busy with classes and official works, it is quite difficult for me. For this reason, I am feeling exhausted and I may quit at any time.”

College sources said the college has about 2,500 students in Higher Secondary and Degree (pass) sections.

There is also crisis of 3rd and 4th class employees. Among 17 posts, 11 are in service, said the sources.

Seeking anonymity many students, said regular classes were not held for lack of teachers.

“Those who are in service are not interested to teach students. In this situation, the academic lives of the 2,500 students are in great threat,” said a student who preferred to be unnamed.

Abdus Salam, a guardian who lives in Chatkhil municipality area, said: “Teachers of the school could not finish syllabus before HSC examination.

“My elder son is reading in the college, in future I will not enroll any of my child in the educational institute.”

Vice-Principal AFM Ruhul Amin said in spite of informing the matter to the higher authority, no action is taken. l

NEWS IN BRIEF Elephants destroy crops

One held with firearm

Wild elephants destroyed crops and houses at Modhonogor frontier area in Sunamganj yesterday. The incident took place at Bangalvita, Majherchhara, Bakatoli and Kandapara villages around 9pm. Kandapara village’s Azizur Hoque, 70, said: “Previously, the elephants used to return back to the forest when the locals lighted torches to scare the animals but now they attack us when they see fire.” One Makbul Hossain alleged that the local administration was not taking any steps regarding the matter even though such incidents have been happening for a long time. The elephants ate the crops of some 30 acre land, said Kazi Uddin of Kandapara village. UP Member Romjan Ali said: “I have informed the higher authority regarding the matter several times, but they did not response to it.” South Bongshikundo union Chairman Jamal Hossain said the elephants enter in the villages because of food scarcity. – Our Correspondent, Sunamganj

Detective Branch of police arrested a person yesterday with a firearm and one bullet in Tongi College Gate area of Gazipur.

The arrested is Syed Badsha , 35, son of Bikku Miah of Sariakandi village in Bogra.

DB police Officer-in-Charge Amir Hossain said: “Acting on a tip-off, a team of DB police conducted a drive at Tongi College Gate area around 11pm and arrested Syed with a foreign-made pistol and one round of bullet.” The arrestee was produced before the court and later sent to jail on Thursday morning, added the OC. – Our Correspondent, Gazipur

Seven shops gutted At least seven shops were gutted in a devastating fire incident at Khasherhat under Subarnachar upazila in Noakhali yesterday.

Sources said the fire had originated from electric short circuit at shop and later en-

gulfed the area leaving seven shops burnt to ashes. On information, firefighters from Maijdee court reached the area and doused the fire. – Our Correspondent, Noakh

UP chairman arrested Police arrested the chairman of Poilarkandi union parisahd yesterday, the prime accused in Rezu murder case in the district.

A police team led by Assistant Superintendent Nazmul Islam and Baniachang OC Biswajit Deb conducted a drive at Habiganj staff quarter in the morning and arrested the chairman Khowaz Ali. ASP Nazmul Islam said Khowaz Ali was accused in a dozen cases. Khowaz and former member Sworaj Mia of Poilarkandi union parisahd had a longstanding dispute over establishing supremacy. Following the dispute, supporters of the chairman and the member locked in a clash on February 2 that left Rezu Mia dead on the spot. – Our Correspondent, Habiganj

A gang of robbers looted valuables looted valuables from a house of Hindus at Boalia village under Mohadebhpur upazila in Naogon yesterday.

Local sources said a gang of robbers numbering 15/16 entered the house of Jatish Chandra Majumder Robi at midnight.

As soon as they entered the house they kept a four-year old boy under gun point and looted cash, gold ornaments and other valuables worth around Tk7 lakh. l

DHAKA TRIBUNE

Long Form

7

Friday, November 28, 2014

Why Asia is on the brink of a golden era

A worker stands on a dock next to the Huangpu river in Shanghai

A

n Kishore Mahbubani sia will experience a new golden era of peace and prosperity over the next 10 years. The export-led growth model of the past will no longer work for the major Asian economies. Hence, we are unlikely to see a return to double-digit growth.

If the major Asian economies, especially China, India and Indonesia, are able to maintain growth rates of around 7% a year, this will be a major achievement. Fortunately, this is within their reach. Three factors will drive this.

The first factor is an almost unbelievable accident of history. It is truly remarkable that the three most populous Asian countries, namely China, India and Indonesia, have simulta-

in 2020. Multinational corporations have spotted this trend.

Many of these MNCs are ahead of their governments and have stepped up their presence in the region.

Singapore has the potential to be the biggest beneficiary of this big shift to Asia. Pessimistic Western consumers will not drive global demand. Instead, optimistic Asian consumers will gradually pick up global demand.

It would be foolish to pretend that all will be rosy in the region. Several geopolitical clouds will continue to affect the region. Five deserve mention.

But there are clouds The most important geopolitical relationship is always between the world’s No 1 power (now the US) and the emerging No 1, now China.

There is a remarkably wide and deep consensus among regional leaders that they should focus on modernisation and pragmatic development

neously put in place dynamic and reform-minded leaders who can be expected to transform their countries over the next decade.

The second factor is the consolidation of the “Deng Xiaoping-Lee Kuan Yew consensus” on national development. We have just seen three remarkable back-to-back leaders’ meetings in East Asia: APEC in Beijing, East Asia Summit in Naypyidaw and the Group of 20 in Brisbane.

An amazing number of new agreements were signed. There was also a historic (albeit unsmiling) handshake between President Xi Jinping of China and Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, laying to rest fears of a China-Japan war.

What was the key underlying factor that explains the success of these meetings? The simple answer is that, North Korea excepted, there is a remarkably wide and deep consensus among regional leaders that they should focus on modernisation and pragmatic development.

This explains why East Asia is functional while the Middle East remains dysfunctional. Our region has been infected by a silent, healthy virus of modernisation. Because it is silent, the Western media has not noticed and continue to predict doom.

The third factor is the explosion of the Asian middle-class population from 500 million in 2010 to 1.75 billion

In theory, US-China relations should hit a new peak of rivalry in the next decade, because, this year, China will surpass the US and become the world’s biggest economy in purchasing power parity terms. Curiously, the US-China relationship is remarkably stable.

REUTERS

Indeed, there is even some sun showing through what should be the darkest geopolitical cloud, as demonstrated by the extraordinary climate change agreement reached between Mr Xi and US President Barack Obama.

The most dangerous relationship this year was that between China and Japan. Many feared that they would go to war. Instead, they shook hands.

If Mr Abe can restrain his nationalistic tendencies and focus on firing economic arrows to jumpstart Japan’s economic growth, this troubled relationship can remain under control.

Several Chinese leaders may have also realised that China went overboard in browbeating Japan in recent years.

The most important future geopolitical relationship is between the world’s next No 1 and No 2 economies, namely China and India. When Mr Narendra Modi became prime minister of India, there was hope of a major breakthrough.

However, the border issue continues to bedevil this relationship. The world will look upon Mr Modi and Mr Xi to wisely overcome this nagging issue.

Logically, Russia should have been drifting closer to Europe and the West to balance a rising China. Instead, the opposite has happened. The accident in Ukraine disrupted geopolitical logic.

If Western leaders were as pragmatic as Asian leaders, they would have found a compromise.

Instead, the West went back to its usual self-righteous tendencies and imposed sanctions on Russia. This geopolitical loss by the West has been a gain for Asia, as seen by the US $400 billion (S$520 billion) Russia-China energy deal.

Finally, the Islamic State group emerged as a complete surprise. It would have been ignored if innocent Westerners had not been killed. The decapitations forced the West, especially the US, to react. However, ISIS does not pose a great global threat. It is an isolated tumor.

Don’t believe the Anglo-Saxon media To understand how these five geopolitical clouds will affect Asia, please do not rely on the dominant Anglo-Saxon media. Some of their editors are trapped in a narrow and often ideological Anglo-Saxon mental universe.

For example, the Anglo-Saxon media has been predicting the collapse of the Chinese Communist Party for almost 25 years. I predict that they will continue to do so in the next 10 years.

I also predict that the CCP will last the next 10 years.

There is a great global demand for an authoritative voice on Asia’s resurgence.

When the British Empire reigned supreme, the Times of London served as the newspaper of record. When the American century began, the New York Times emerged as the newspaper of record. As the Asian century unfolds, The Straits Times is well poised to be the newspaper of record for the Asian century. Fortunately, The Straits Times already has a group of excellent Asian correspondents in place. It has the product. All that the ST has to do is to create a new package of news on Asia for the rest of the world.

Asean is key Asean will have to play a critical role in

We have just seen three remarkable back-to-back leaders’ meetings in East Asia and an amazing number of new agreements were signed

Asean countries must overcome their schizophrenic attitude towards Asean economic cooperation. Any rational economic analysis will show that no Asean market, not even Indonesia’s, is big enough to compete with China and India if they take off

the coming decade. Few in the world have given Asean enough credit for the culture of musyawarah and mufakat (“consultation and consensus” in Bahasa Indonesia) developed in Southeast Asia.

More importantly, Asean has also infected the rest of East Asia and South Asia with a similar culture. This is why all the major regional powers, including the US and Russia, “trust” Asean to provide a credible neutral platform to enable them to engage each other.

However, to play this leadership role credibly, Asean must retain its cohesion (and avoid incidents like the breakdown in the Asean consensus in Phnom Penh in July 2012) and ensure that the Asean Economic Community is a success after it is launched next year.

Asean countries must overcome their schizophrenic attitude towards Asean economic cooperation. The only way to overcome this attitude is to

use the force of reason. Any rational economic analysis will show that no Asean market, not even Indonesia’s, is big enough to compete with China and India if they take off.

Asean companies need a bigger playing field if they are to become competitive. Hence, next year, led by Malaysia, Asean leaders must bite the bullet and push economic cooperation to the next level.

In short, all the trends are pointing towards a new golden era for the region. To understand their own futures, the Asians must believe in themselves and develop new positive global narratives to supplement the dominant negative Western narratives. l This is an excerpt from a recent keynote address by Professor Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, at ST Global Outlook Forum. This article was first published by the Huffington Post.

REUTERS

8

EU lawmakers want Google breaking-up n Reuters, Brussels European Union lawmakers overwhelmingly backed a motion yesterday urging antitrust regulators to get tough on Google and other Internet search engines and consider breaking them up.

The resolution in the European Parliament (EP), the strongest public signal of Europe’s concern with the growing power of US tech giants, was passed with 384 votes for versus 174 against.

Google is the target of a four-year investigation by the Commission, triggered by complaints from Microsoft, Expedia “Clear adoption by EP of digital single market motion, including unbundling for search engine if needed,” Spanish liberal lawmaker and co-sponsor of the bill, Ramon Tremosa said on Twitter.

The resolution did not mention Google or any specific search engine, though Google is by far the dominant provider of such services in Europe with an esti-

World

DHAKA TRIBUNE

mated 90% market share.

The lawmakers called on the Commission, in charge of enforcing fair competition in the European Union, to consider proposals with the aim of unbundling search engines from other commercial services.

While the legislature has no power in the matter, the call to the Commission is intended to increase pressure on new antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager to act quickly.

Google is the target of a four-year investigation by the Commission, triggered by complaints from Microsoft, Expedia, European publishers and others that it promotes its services at their expense.

However, technology lobbying group Computer & Communications Industry Association, whose members include Google, eBay Facebook, Microsoft and Samsung, said unbundling was an “extreme and unworkable” solution that made no sense in rapidly changing online markets.

“While clearly targeting Google, the parliament is in fact suggesting all search companies, or online companies with a search facility, may need to be separated. This is of great concern as we try to create a digital single market,” it said. l

Friday, November 28, 2014

BEFORE THE LIGHTS WENT OUT

The tarmac of LaGuardia airport is pictured through a window on the day before Thanksgiving, in New York. More than 350,000 electric customers from Maine to Virginia were without power yesterday morning, after a storm dumped a sloppy mix of rain and snow along the East Coast of USA REUTERS

Mosul residents: IS group cuts phones in Iraq city

Family says Ferguson decision ‘heartbreaking’

n AP, Baghdad

n Agencies

Militants from the Islamic State group blocked all mobile phone networks in the largest Iraqi city they control, Mosul, accusing informants in the city of tipping off coalition forces to their whereabouts, residents told The Associated Press yesterday.

Residents described a scene of

“chaos” and “paralysis” in the city Thursday, a day after the militants announced their decision on their Mosul-based radio network.

Businesses were at a standstill as residents tried to understand what was happening, they said. Some are still able to access the Internet, which operates under a different network.

All residents spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

The militants seized the city in June during their lightning advance across northern Iraq, after the Iraqi military virtually crumbled when confronted by the group. The US began launching airstrikes on Aug. 8 and has conducted at least 22 strikes around the city of Mosul alone. l

Israel ‘foils Hamas cell planning Jerusalem attacks’ n BBC Israel’s internal security service says it has uncovered a Hamas cell in the West Bank that was planning to carry out a series of attacks in Jerusalem.

Shin Bet said it had arrested more than 30 militants who were trained

abroad, and recovered weapons and explosives.

They planned to kidnap Israelis and their targets for attack included a football stadium in Jerusalem and the city’s light rail system, it alleged.

The arrests come at a time of rising Israeli-Palestinians tension.

Finally, 700 migrants reach Greece n AP, Greece More than 700 people, most fleeing Syria, were disembarking Thursday on the Greek island of Crete after a harrowing journey on a smuggling ship that which broke down in gale-force winds while trying to reach Europe.

The Baris cargo ship lost engine power Tuesday in international waters off Crete, and reached the coastal town of Ierapetra after being slowly towed for 40 hours by a Greek navy frigate.

Authorities said its passengers include many Syrians — with a large number of women and children — seeking safety and a better life in Europe, and are exhausted but overall in good health.

As dozens of Ierapetra residents looked on from behind a police cordon, the coast guard started the disembarkation with women and small children who received preliminary care and food before being taken to temporary shelter at a basketball arena.

It is one of the largest single crossings of its kind in recent years. Tens of thousands of people fleeing war and poverty in African and the Middle East risk the journey to Europe every year, paying smuggling gangs to transport them in usually unseaworthy craft ranging from dinghies to aging rust-buckets. Most end up in Italy.

According to the latest figures from the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, at least 3,000 people have drowned or disappeared trying to make the trip this year — almost 2% of the estimated total of 165,000 to attempt the journey.

The 77-meter (250-foot) cargo ship lost power the same day Pope Francis called on European governments to do a better job of welcoming migrants in speeches to the European Parliament and Council of Europe. Francis said

“we cannot allow the Mediterranean to become a vast cemetery!”

The mayor of Ierapetra, a town of 16,000 people on a wide, open bay overlooked by jagged hills, said he sympathised with the migrants. But stretched local authorities couldn’t offer them shelter indefinitely, Theodossis Kaladzakis said.

“Ierapetra can look after these people for a week, but afterward, unfortunately, we simply won’t have that ability,” he said. “It’s not that we don’t want to. We just can’t.”

Doctors have conducted preliminary health checks and polio vaccinations for children from Syria, where the disease has made a comeback, senior Greek public health official Panayiotis Efstathiou said. Kurds, Afghans and Palestinians were also aboard the ship, which originated in Antalya, Turkey, Efstathiou told The Associated Press.

A pregnant woman, who was hemorrhaging, was airlifted to a hospital Wednesday, but there were otherwise no reports of serious health problems aboard the Baris. Rumors of armed men aboard the vessel proved unfounded, the coast guard said.

Efstathiou said the Syrians will receive refugee status and be released, while other passengers deemed to be in Greece illegally will be interned pending deportation.

A UNHCR spokeswoman in Athens said more than 99% of Syrians reaching Greece eventually gain refugee status in a lengthy and cumbersome process.

“There are people who have to visit application centers, which can handle very few people a day, 10-15 times,” she said. “And there should be a mechanism for their integration, because now people complete the refugee process and then end up in the street.” l

Over the past month, 11 Israelis have been killed by Palestinians, including four rabbis and a policeman who were stabbed and shot at a synagogue in Jerusalem last week. Twelve Palestinians have also been killed, including several of those who carried out the attacks. l

Slain US teenager Michael Brown’s mother says it has been a “sleepless, very hard, heartbreaking and unbelievable’’ time for her since the grand jury’s decision not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for killing her son.

Lesley McSpadden said on Wednesday during an interview on NBC’s “Today” show that she felt that Wilson’s description of her son as looking demonic during their August 9 confrontation was disrespectful and “added insult to injury.”

The family spoke out after officer Wilson said in his first televised interview since the incident that Brown resembled an angry “demon” who had started the confrontation, grabbing for his gun and later rushing toward him.

“I don’t believe a word of it. I know my son far too well to... he would never do anything like that. He would never provoke anyone to do anything to him and he wouldn’t do anything to

anybody...,” McSpadden said in a separate interview on CBS television.

His father, Michael Brown Sr, said on NBC he felt the officer’s version of events was “crazy.”

No more grand-jury

The governor of Missouri has reportedly rejected calls for a new grand jury to decide whether to charge a white police officer for killing a black teenager.

It follows two days of unrest in St Louis and 12 other cities over a ruling not to charge Darren Wilson for the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown.

But demonstrations appeared to dwindle on Wednesday amid heavy snowfall on the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday.

A handful of protesters remain in Ferguson, where Mr Brown was killed.

The family of Michael Brown said they were left “crushed” by the ruling, which has triggered nationwide debates over relations between black communities and law enforcement. l

THE C ATA S T R O P H I Cconsequences C O N S E Q U E N C E of S Oglobal F G LO B warming A L WA R M I N G The catastrophic Current temperatures 0.8 °C above pre-industrial levels and planet is probably already locked in to nearly 1.5°C+ LATIN AMERICA, CARIBBEAN

If temperatures rise +4 °C...

If temperatures rise +2 °C...

EUROPE, CENTRAL ASIA

MIDDLE EAST, NORTH AFRICA Nearly 60%

80%+ Atlantic More cyclones 40%+ Near total Andes Glacier loss

50%+ Russia More summer heatwaves 5-10%+ Up to 80% Central Asia Glacier loss 50%

Up to 90%

Declining rainfall Up to 60%

Syria

Libya Egypt 20-40%

Jordan

Drop in crop yields Up to 30%

Source: World Bank report, Turn Down the Heat

US, British data show 2014 could be hottest year on record n Reuters, Oslo This year may eclipse 2010 as the hottest since records began in the 19th century, a sign long-term global warming is being stoked by rising greenhouse gas emissions, scientists said.

The period of January to October 2014 is already among the warmest ever recorded, and a warm ending to the year could easily make it top, according to US and British data.

Skeptics who doubt the necessity of a shift away from fossil fuels to stop the Earth’s climate from heating up point out that world average temperatures have not risen much since 1998, despite rising greenhouse gas emissions.

But the final ranking for 2014, due next year, may influence public and business perceptions about the severity of climate change. Almost 200 governments are due to agree a UN deal to combat global warming in Paris in December next year.

“2014 is more likely than not to be the warmest year,” Tim Osborn, a professor at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, told Reuters, saying manmade greenhouse gas emissions are tending to push up temperatures.

He said there were many uncertainties about where 2014 would rank because of natural variations in temperatures late in the year. Also, a big volcanic eruption might spew out ash that dims sunshine, cooling the planet.

The UN’s World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) will publish a preliminary ranking for 2014 on Dec. 3, during annual UN talks in Peru which will prepare the Paris accord.

Promises for action by China, the United States and the European Union have made a global deal more likely, but any agreement will probably be too weak to halt rising temperatures despite new scientific warnings of powerful storms, floods, desertification and rising sea levels.

Of the WMO’s three main data sources, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ranks January-October 2014 as the warmest such period on record, NASA as the second-warmest and the British Met Office and University of East Anglia as the third-warmest.

NOAA says 2014 is on track to be the warmest on record. The rankings differ partly because scientists use different estimates for places with few thermometers, such as the Arctic.

“It probably is a bit premature to say 2014 will be the warmest year on record,” said Michael Cabbage, spokesman for NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

The British data place 2014 third, fractionally behind 2010 and 1998, which both cooled toward the end of the year.

Despite a slowdown in the pace of warming since 1998, the WMO says 13 of the 14 warmest years on record have been in this century. l

Human trial of Ebola vaccine ‘promising’ n Agencies Researchers in the US say they are a step closer to developing an Ebola vaccine, with a Phase 1 trial showing promising results, but it will be months at the earliest before it can be used in the field.

The news comes amid the worst ever outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever, which has killed nearly 5,700 people in West Africa, most of them in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Pharmaceutical companies and health agencies are scrambling to fasttrack experimental drugs and vaccines that could help fight the deadly disease.

In the first phase of testing, all 20 healthy adults injected with a higher or lower dose of the vaccine developed antibodies needed to fight Ebola, said the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which conducted the study.

Results were published on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The researchers reported no serious side effects. But two people who received the higher-dose vaccine briefly spiked fevers, one above 103 degrees Fahrenheit (39 Celsius), which disappeared within a day. l

Saudi Arabia beheads ninth Pakistani since mid-October n AFP Saudi Arabia yesterday beheaded a Pakistani for heroin smuggling, bringing to nine the number of Pakistanis executed in the country since mid-October.

Mohammed Rahman Mohammed Asghar had been “tried and found guilty of smuggling a large quantity of heroin into the kingdom,” the official Saudi Press Agency said.

The sentence was carried out in the Eastern Province city of Khobar.

Asghar was the latest of 74 people, foreigners and Saudis, to be executed in the kingdom this year, according to an AFP tally.

The oil-rich Gulf state saw the third highest number of executions in the world last year after Iran and Iraq, according to Amnesty International whose figures did not include China l

Ukraine’s parliament elects Yatseniuk for a new term as PM n Reuters, Kiev Ukraine’s new parliament elected Arseny Yatseniuk for a new term as prime minister at its opening session yesterday, after President Petro Poroshenko and a newly-formed coalition in the assembly supported his appointment.

A total of 341 deputies in the 450seat parliament voted for Yatseniuk to stay on as head of the government, a post he has occupied since the overthrow of former president Viktor Yanukovich in February. l

DHAKA TRIBUNE

World

9

Friday, November 28, 2014

Suicide bomber kills five in attack on British embassy car in Kabul

THE COY HANDSHAKE OF HOPE

The blast wounded 33 people

n Reuters, Kabul

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Left, shakes hands with his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif, right, as Nepal’s Prime Minister Sushil Koirala, back centre, watches during the closing session of 18th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit in Kathmandu yesterday. A brief meeting between Modi and his Pakistani counterpart appears to have salvaged a summit of South Asian leaders, with all eight countries clinching a last-minute deal to create a regional electricity grid REUTERS

A suicide bomber attacked a British embassy vehicle in the Afghan capital yesterday, killing five people, including one Briton, the ministry of interior said.

The blast in the east of Kabul wounded 33 people, including many bystanders, the latest in a wave of bombings to hit Kabul as the majority of foreign combat troops prepare to withdraw from the country by the end of the year.

Taliban insurgents, who were ousted from power by a US-led coalition in 2001, claimed responsibility for the attack saying it “targeted foreign invading forces.”

Attacks targeting foreign embassy personnel are less common than the near-daily bombings striking Afghan and international military forces on the country’s roads.

The British embassy confirmed there were injuries among those in the vehicle, but did not comment on the reported death.

“I can confirm it was a British vehicle and there are some injuries. We are working with the Afghan authorities,” said the spokesman, who asked not to be identified.

Indian police say girls found Thai election pushed back to 2016 hanging killed themselves n Reuters, Bangkok

n Reuters, New Delhi Two Indian teenage girls found hanged in May took their own lives and were not raped or murdered, police investigators told media yesterday, fuelling further criticism of their handling of a case that sparked global outrage.

Initial inquiries suggested the cousins, aged 14 and 15, from a low-caste community, were raped before being hanged from a mango tree in Badaun district in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh Their deaths added to public anger

in India over a spate of rapes that has made violence against women into front-page news, particularly since authorities seemed slow to react after the fatal gang-rape of a 23-year-old student on a Delhi bus in 2012.

But after five months of inquiry, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said further forensic tests contradicted earlier findings and it had concluded the girls were not sexually assaulted and were not murdered.

“Our probe found that the two girls had committed suicide and weren’t murdered,” CBI director Ranjit Sinha told the Hindustan Times. l

A Thai general election planned for next year will be delayed until 2016, a deputy prime minister said yesterday, pushing back the promised return to democracy.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, who led a military coup in May, had previously hinted at a delay to polls promised for late 2015.

Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan, who is also defence minister, said elections will take place in 2016, citing groups opposed to the junta, or National Council for Peace and Order, as it is formally known, as one reason for the delay.

“We will be able to organise elections

around the start of 2016 once the constitution is drafted,” Prawit told reporters.

“Right now there are elements opposed to the National Council for Peace and Order.”

Prayuth has outlined a year of reforms that are partly aimed at ending the political influence of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

The army has said the May coup was necessary to avoid further bloodshed after months of sometimes violent protests that helped oust Thaksin’s sister, former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.

The military scrapped the constitution shortly after it took power and has appointed a committee to draft a new one.

Supreme Leader not opposed to extension of nuclear talks

n Reuters, Dubai Iran’s supreme leader made clear yesterday he backed extended nuclear talks with world powers, shoring up Tehran’s negotiating team against attacks by his hardline acolytes for failing to strike a deal that could have meant major relief from sanctions.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also said that if the talks, extended on Monday for seven months beyond the Nov. 24 deadline, ultimately failed, “the sky won’t fall to the ground” and that the United States would be the biggest loser if that transpired.

With the two sides having missed a deadline to overcome their differences for the second time this year, Iranians face the prospect of at least several more months of international sanctions that have hammered their standard of living.

But Khamenei, the ultimate authority on all Iranian matters of state, said: “For the same reasons I wasn’t against negotiations, I’m also not against the extension.” l

Malaysia leader nixes pledge to scrap sedition law

n AP, Malaysia

Malaysia’s leader said Thursday that a colonial-era law curbing free speech will be retained and strengthened, backpedaling on a pledge two years ago to abolish the Sedition Act as part of political reforms.

The law, introduced by the British in 1948, criminalises speech or actions with an undefined “seditious tendency,” including that which promotes hatred against the government or incites racial discord.

In a speech opening a three-day assembly of his ruling Malay party, Prime Minister Najib Razak said it will be bolstered to include provisions to defend Islam and other religions, and to act against those calling for the secession of Sabah and Sarawak states on Borneo island. Party delegates clapped loudly in approval. l

Last week, the government said martial law, which the army imposed days before it took power, will not be lifted for the foreseeable future, despite an earlier pledge to lift the law in some provinces to help the tourism sector which has struggled since the coup.

Thailand plunged into political crisis almost a decade ago following the ouster of Thaksin, a former telecoms tycoon who upset the establishment with populist policies that won him votes in Thailand’s agrarian heartland.

Thailand has been broadly split ever since between his supporters and detractors.

Prawit appealed for understanding over the delayed polls. l

Ten dead in disputed Kashmir militant attack n Reuters, Srinagar Gunmen wearing army uniforms yesterday attacked an Indian army base near the border with Pakistan, leaving ten people dead in the worst militant violence in the disputed state of Kashmir in more than a year.

The incident came as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif had a brief meeting at a summit of South Asian leaders in Nepal that clinched a deal to create a regional electricity grid.

Four or five gunmen split into two groups upon arriving in the town of Arnia, about 4 km (3 miles) from the border, with one group attacking an army bunker

and the other holed up in a house, a senior army officer said.

Three soldiers and three civilians were shot dead, said Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, adding, “My condolences to the families.” He said four militants were also killed.

India and Pakistan fought two of their three wars since independence in 1947 over Muslim-majority Kashmir, which they both claim in full but rule in part.

Muslim separatists have been fighting Indian forces in the Indian portion of Kashmir since 1989.

India accuses Pakistan of training and arming the rebels in the portion it controls and sending them to the Indian side, a claim its neighbour denies. l

Hong Kong police arrest protesters, 7 officers n AP, Hong Kong Hong Kong police arrested 11 more people in a second night of scuffles with demonstrators angry at having their 2-month-old pro-democracy protest camp in a volatile neighborhood shut down, officials said Thursday.

Police also said they arrested seven of their own officers for assault in connection with the Oct. 15 beating of a handcuffed protester during a violent nighttime clash.

None of the seven officers were identified. There was public anger when they were caught on camera apparently kicking and punching the protester in a dark corner of an underpass where hundreds of police were battling activists.

In a statement, police denied accusations that their failure to immediately arrest them meant they were delaying the case. Police said they were continuing to investigate and collect evidence.

The latest arrests of the activists followed an aggressive operation by authorities to clear out the protest camp on the busy streets of the crowded Mong Kok district, one of three protest zones around the city. Police already hold 148 people who have been detained since Tuesday, including high-profile student leaders Joshua Wong and Lester Shum.

Wong, 18, heads the Scholarism group, while Shum, 21, is second-in-command of the Hong Kong Federation of Students. The groups have played important roles in organising the protest movement seeking free elections in the former British colony.

The protesters are demanding that Hong Kong’s government scrap a plan by China’s Communist leaders to use a panel of Beijing-friendly elites to screen candidates for the territory’s top leader in inaugural 2017 elections. l

A Western security source said one of the British employees traveling in the vehicle had died in hospital, while a second Briton was wounded and in stable condition.

A Reuters witness saw at least one survivor being led away from the charred shell of the vehicle on foot by a member of the British security force.

The interior ministry initially reported the blast was caused by a suicide bomber on a motorcycle, but later said attacker was traveling by car.

The Afghan capital has been hit by a wave of attacks in recent weeks and Thursday’s bombing was at least the fourth since Monday, when two American soldiers were killed in a powerful blast close to the airport.

While not common, attacks against diplomatic missions and personnel in Afghanistan show a determination to target anyone associated with the USled mission.

A 25-year-old American diplomat was killed last year in an attack on a convoy in the country’s east.

The Indian consulate in the western province of Herat was attacked in May by insurgents with rocket-propelled grenades and suicide vests. Last year, the US consulate in Herat was also attacked with a truck bomb. l

Police detain 34 suspects in killing of Quetta polio workers n Agencies Police yesterday detained 34 suspects in connection with the killing of polio health workers in Quetta.

According to police spokesman, Quetta police conducted raids in Sariab road, Eastern Bypass, Killi Mullakhail and other areas in the aftermath of the killing of four polio workers on Wednesday morning.

Gunmen killed three female and one male polio worker in Quetta’s Eastern Bypass area. Three other workers suffered serious bullet wounds.

The spokesman said police recovered pistols and other weapons from the suspects possession.

“They are being interrogated by police officials,” he said.

The arrests have come a day after lady health workers (LHWs) announced a boycott of anti-polio campaign in Quetta and other parts of Balochistan.

The LHWs complained that the government was unable to protect them and that they would continue their boycott for an indefinite period.

Meanwhile, police also registered a case in New Sariab police station against unknown terrorists for the killings.

The case was registered by SHO Noor Bakhsh under article 302 and other terrorism related articles.

Balochistan Chief Minister Dr Malik Baloch also chaired a high level meeting to discuss the security situation in the wake of the killings.

Police officers and officers of intelligence agencies participated in the meeting which discussed ways and means to ensure security for polio workers in the province. l

Deaths reported in China coal-mine explosion n AFP Eleven people have died in a coal mine explosion in China, according to state media reports, in the second deadly accident in two days in the country’s dangerous mining industry.

The blast struck the Songlin mine in the southwestern province of Guizhou on Thursdsay morning when 19 miners were working underground, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Eight of them managed to survive, the report said, adding that rescue operations were ongoing and investigations underway.

The accident came a day after a fire at a coal mine in Liaoning province in the northeast killed 26 people.

China’s mines are among the world’s deadliest because of lax regulation, corruption and poor operating procedures.

Safety is often neglected by bosses seeking easy profits and accidents are common. l

10

DHAKA TRIBUNE

Editorial

Friday, November 28, 2014

CODE-CRACKER

Invest in skills to improve competitiveness

A

ccording to the Competitive Industrial Performance Report recently released by the United Nations and World Economic Forum, Bangladesh stands at 77th position out of all countries in its latest competitive industrial performance (CIP) index.

This index, which is topped by Germany, provides a relative measure of the ability of different countries to produce and export manufactured goods competitively.

While we are higher than we were two decades ago, our ranking is still much lower than the size of Bangladesh’s economy, which the World Bank ranks as the 57th biggest in the world, and our population size.

Together with Bangladesh’s poor score for ease of doing business in the World Bank and IFC’s Doing Business Report 2014, where we stand at 173rd out of 189 states, it is a glaring indication of how far behind its potential the economy is growing.

Weak infrastructure, as well as unreliable energy supplies, and poor transport links are key problems identified in the report, which the government must do more to address.

Just as important, the report also recommends putting more emphasis on improving skills and training workers to be more productive and innovative.

In order to stay competitive and harness the potential of our demographic dividend, we cannot risk relying on low-wage, low-skill exports. As the economy grows, we have to continually invest in skills development to help exporters rise up the value chain.

This is one area which all organisations have to improve if the economy is to develop and become more internationally competitive.

We cannot rely on low-wage, low-skill exports

Audits show reform impossible for state banks

N

ewly announced government audit reports reveal that public sector banks were responsible for around half the Tk6,196 crore of unaccounted for irregularities involving public money identified by the auditor for the four years up to 2011. The telecoms regulator BTRC was the biggest offender among other institutions.

The rotten state of the state banking sector was further highlighted last week by disclosures made to a parliamentary committee by the Basic Bank managing director.

Despite extensive investigations and changes to the Basic Bank board, the scam-hit state bank has not been able to trace 14 clients who owe Tk563 crore accounting for over half of its total loans.

It is apparent that recent changes to the boards of directors of state-run banks are not achieving any significant impact in reforming procedures to prevent abuses and scandals.

The government’s persistence with the policy of spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year to keep state-run banks afloat is sending completely the wrong signal, given the Bangladesh Bank’s findings that the boards of directors of several state-run banks are continuing to flout rules designed to ensure prudent lending.

It is pointless to waste scarce taxpayer money propping up these dysfunctional banks. Government money needs to be spent more productively. The public is well served by private banks which have consistently shown they are better managed and profitable.

A combination of privatisation, managed asset disposal, and closure is the prudent course which the government should take to deal with bankrupt state banks.

A combination of privatisation, managed asset disposal, and closure is the prudent course

Be heard Write to Dhaka Tribune FR Tower, 8/C Panthapath, Sukrabad, Dhaka-1207 Email letters.dt@dhakatribune.com Send us your Op-Ed articles: opinion.dt@dhakatribune.com www.dhakatribune.com Join our Facebook community: https://www.facebook.com/DhakaTribune

Who was Ghulam Azam?

November 13

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

Faizul Kabir Garga from India writes many things about our politics. In his last article, it seemed to me he tried to incite one group to stand up and fight the people who are followers of religion. He seems to have been trying to create rift, conflict, and then violence in Bangladesh. He should be advised to not meddle in others’ affairs. jotoshobbajekotha Faizul Kabir: Meaning, whatever he said about Ghulam Azam and the phenomenon of rebranding criminals as holy men is untrue? I wonder who is more alien to Bangladesh, Mr Garga or you. abul kalam jotoshobbajekotha: We never said Ghulam Azam was our hero or he was right. We condemn him as a war criminal. Why do you pick up something that is not there?

We would simply like to say that Bangladeshis are good enough to handle their own situation.

We don’t need outsiders to tell us what to do, or who or what Ghulam Azam was.

H Khondker jotoshobbajekotha: This is sad and interesting.

Sad because racism is alive and strong. A young Harvard professor is labeled as a “meddling outsider” “from India”” etc. A nuanced and well-written article becomes a ploy for “trying to create rift, conflict (and God forbid) and then violence.” Interesting, because this is exactly the mindset that Dr Chatterjee – like many other thinking people – is worried about.

This is also somewhat worrisome because it implies censorship. I don’t want to elaborate on the issue of lateral censorship, which can be more dangerous than the vertical one.

SK H Khondker: If you are a Bangladeshi, try writing an article on Indian politics in an Indian newspaper, taking a side like Garga did here, and let us know if you can manage to publish it. Garga plays the vile game of “Tradition West Bengal leftist tactics.” Would you ask Garga how he feels living under a PM who is a mass murderer?

Also see Garga write as a Hindu Bengali, but do not mention that he sees India as his motherland, not Bangladesh. He has never written about the BSF killings. Ask him why.

Garga Chatterjee SK: I admit that among the two sides in Bangladesh, the war criminals and their victims, I have taken the side of the victims, against the war criminals. I stand guilty. I have written multiple times about the Felani murder case.

Thank you for your thorough reading of my earlier pieces. Maybe you missed them. My motherland is Bengal – a concept quite different from the nation-states of India or Bangladesh. There is a huge difference between Desh and Rashtro.

Deshi Garga Chatterjee: A lot of West Bengalis have a sense of attachment with Bangladesh, which is great. But the vice versa is true only in the case of a minute fraction of Bangladeshis. While Indian Bengalis struggle with a sense of identity, to a Bangladeshi it’s not the case. Within Bangladesh,

CALVIN AND HOBBES

How to solve: Each number in our CODE-CRACKER grid represents a different letter of the alphabet. For example, today 13 represents R so fill R every time the figure 13 appears.

You have two letters in the control grid to start you off. Enter them in the appropriate squares in the main grid, then use your knowledge of words to work out which letters go in the missing squares.

Some letters of the alphabet may not be used.

As you get the letters, fill in the other squares with the same number in the main grid, and the control grid. Check off the list of alphabetical letters as you identify them.

all Bengalis are Bangladeshi, comprising a 95+% population, whereas in India, being Bengali is one of hundreds of other national identities.

I can understand why you feel the “Desh” and “Rashtro” (state vs nation?) terms can be interchangeable according to the situation, but for Bangladeshis, it’s always constant.

Now regarding your post on Ghulam Azam, his ideology was never supported by the majority of Bangladeshis, and hence, Jamaat-e-Islami rarely got more than 5% of the popular votes. But when the AL-led government, with the help and overt interference of the Indian government, tried to sideline the opposition (of which Jamaat happens to be a part), that does not sit well with a lot of Bangladeshis (except AL supporters, who seem to be happy to sacrifice the democratic process).

The angry posts on this wall are not a sign that Bangladeshis are against your article; hence, they must be rooting for Azam. Rather, Bangladeshis don’t like Indian interference in every facet of our new democracy and our lives in general (and you happen to be an Indian). abul kalam We all belong to Bangladesh, and we had spilled millions of gallons of blood for our liberation. We know the pains the Razakars have caused us; so we don’t have any sympathy for them. We have our own minds and hands to work on that. We are trying them in court, and many of them are on their way to the gallows! So we don’t need anyone to incite people against Islam (in the name of Ghulam Azam).

Only education or academic merit doesn’t make one a right-thinking person; one needs to come from a good family background and have a high character.

R Mohsen Bari People who are trying to demean the writers are the new generation of Mir Jafars. The writer does not provide anything controversial but simply state facts that cannot be undermined or proven false. Hence, the supporters of the war criminal try instead to vilify the writer, instead of the content of the article. Bangladesh is a free society and people are free to support someone who is accused of instigating crimes against humanity.

Faizul Kabir R Mohsen Bari: Whenever we say anything against Indian interference in Bangladesh, you try to term us as supporters of Razakars and so on. Actually you only create confusion and division about the majority of the freedomloving people of Bangladesh. Supporting India is your job, not ours! We want to be friends and equal partners in the global community, and not anyone’s stooge.

SUDOKU How to solve: Fill in the blank spaces with the numbers 1 – 9. Every row, column and 3 x 3 box must contain all nine digits with no number repeating.

CROSSWORD ACROSS 1 Stick (6) 5 Sorrowful (3) 7 Period of time (3) 8 Affectedly modest (6) 11 Zodiac sign (3) 12 Concretion of nacre (5) 14 Amount to pay (4) 16 Staggers (5) 18 Trembling poplar (5) 20 Supplicate (4) 21 Perfect (5) 23 Cover (3) 24 Corrupting influences (6) 27 Frozen treat (3) 28 Armed conflict (3) 29 Proverbs (6)

DOWN 1 Assist (3) 2 Attention-seeking sound (3) 3 Broke out (7) 4 Uncommon (4) 5 Vendor (6) 6 Sleepy (6) 9 Love god (4) 10 Corn spike (3) 13 Copy (7) 14 Inexperienced (6) 15 Arachnid (6) 17 Body of water (4) 19 Beak (3) 22 Dry (4) 25 Seek charity (3) 26 Distress signal (3)

Cracked bridge in Demra November 16

YESTERDAY’S SOLUTIONS CODE-CRACKER

CROSSWORD Fauzia Hasan Ohhh my God!!

PEANUTS

Anon I know! This is terrifying! If that bridge isn’t repaired immediately, there will be an imminent accident. It will collapse and people will be hurt, badly!

Ex-MP’s son on 3-day remand over wife’s death November 16

Tahmid Hossain I have always supported the right to pursue justice. Don’t make this into an eyewash.

Justification is the major objection to democracy. So let us see if and how the government continues to maintain this brutality.

SUDOKU

DHAKA TRIBUNE

Op-Ed

11

Friday, November 28, 2014

We should not lose sight of the future

W

n Morten Koch Andersen hen we get older, we cherish history and dwell on the past.

When we are young, it is all about the future and possibilities.

I visited Bangladesh for the first time in 2005. Ever since, I have been intrigued by its people, its culture, and especially its politics. I have been struck by the enthusiasm, dedication, and sacrifice young people have for politics and political activism. It is rare and prizeworthy. However, contrary to our normal thinking about young activists as challengers of the established order, their politics is very much circumscribed by political parties and party vocabulary and practices.

flows of resources – rewards, benefits, and favours – within the political and the political structures. Academics and commentators agree that these flows have gained importance and effect since liberation, and especially from the time when democracy was reinstated in 1991.

Nonetheless, money talks. The key feature of how this victimhood of history works is the political vocabulary.

Each and every notion in politics always refers back to defining moments in history. The main source of these moments is the war of liberation and the roles and deeds of founding political figures. It is a forceful vocabulary and battlefield of historic definitions.

People struggle and kill over these issues and young people are mobilised on, and for, these struggles.

It is a vocabulary represented and

The challenge is not to convict war criminals at trials; the challenge is to think what comes after

It is a reactive form of politics, which encompasses the entire society and defines and negates new forms of politics and political vocabularies. This is, of course, about history and how to define and determine the past. For any state and nation in transition, it is imperative to know and at least agree on some framework of the past, but today, I believe you are the victims of history. Let me explain.

The most important feature of this victimhood is what I will call the Iconomic configuration of the political.

Iconomic is a combination of icon and economy. Rounaq Jahan has earlier described Bangladesh politics via the concept of the sarkar and sarkari parties and leadership.

This understanding of the political order is at the core of the Iconomic, but I think her concept understates the

T

H

E

materialised in political icons. These icons do not just use history to rule the country, political structures, and followers, but actively draws upon specific moments to (re)create history in and through their discourse and vocabulary.

It is a vocabulary that organises the entire society into two competing groups, based in a dichotomy of secularism and religion, where the prize is absolute parliamentary power and control of state and state resources.

And there is no escape. It is rule by law, not rule of law.

This is the economy. For followers and voters, it is about survival, livelihood, and wealth – in other words, securing a future. But for the icons that define the structures in which the resources flow, it is about determining the past and staying in the retrospective. This is where

F

L

I

P

Is our future a victim of our history?

BIGSTOCK

they get their legitimacy as political leaders and icons. The future might require new thinking, outlook, and perspective.

Every nation needs to shape a shared history to build a future. This is why we have seen an increase in truth and reconciliation processes, courts, and commissions around the world, in countries that have gone through violent transformations. It is processes that are similar to the current in Bangladesh, but often less vindictive and more focused on getting to the truth of the matter, or at least creating a shared understanding of why it happened, and who was responsible.

Many truth and reconciliation processes have incorporated writings of history as integral parts of the process, for example, through victim accounts, perpetrators’ statements, and archival work. In your process, death is a certainty, and history is carved in stone.

Though this process is important for the nation, we should not lose sight

S

I

D

of the future. One could argue that there can be no future before this process is ended, the past is settled, and history is written. Yet, I would caution waiting for its finalisation.

If one takes a look at the young political activists within and outside the political parties, they are all preoccupied by the past. Often they work on slogans of a distant past, which they might feel in spirit, but they hardly know in practice.

For instance, the student organisations associated with the major political parties often refer to a glorious past of student dedication to language and nation. But their own practices are more like hooligans and gangsters, illustrated by the recent events at the universities across the nation.

The Shahbagh movement’s demand for death and their ability to change court rulings testifies to the power of the past in vocabulary, and as a mechanism of mobilisation. Yet, what was striking about the movement was the simplicity

of demands, and the problem to maintain popular momentum when they succeeded. As a retrospective movement, it ended when the lack of a prospective vocabulary became apparent.

The challenge in Bangladesh is not political engagement and activism, as it is in many developed countries, but how this dedication and commitment can be transformed into something new, to offer something new, to see the world differently.

All established politicians, especially when in government, talk about an economic system of growth in GDP terms and export rates, based on a fetishism of becoming a middle income country. As if, this automatically and significantly will change the inequality. The same system, when it collapsed, had devastating effects on the poor, and negatively affected the developing countries.

In a setting where most politicians are amongst the rich and powerful (80% are businessmen) and the

Three symptoms

n Nadeem Qadir

n SM Shahrukh

A

T

It is high time Pakistan becomes civilised enough to seek apology from Bangladesh

The note further stated that “the resolution adopted by KPK Assembly was tantamount to direct interference in the domestic affairs of Bangladesh.

It was deeply regretted that despite repeated overtures made to the Pakistan side, the misleading, motivated, and malicious campaign against the trials of the crimes against humanity and genocide in Bangladesh continued unabated within different quarters in Pakistan.” The government of Pakistan was requested to take due note of these issues.

Indeed it is sad. Only a few weeks

MAHMUD HOSSAIN OPU

back, Bangladesh protested against Pakistani home minister’s comment on the war criminals. The Pakistani Jamaat-e-Islami also organised special prayers after war criminal Ghulam Azam died in hospital of old-age complications.

What does this indicate? It appears that even decades later, Pakistan does not want to accept the fact that its eastern wing is now independent Bangladesh. It also indicates that it still supports the genocide in Bangladesh and it is unrepentant, and that Pakistan is not really interested to smoothen bilateral ties.

I have visited Pakistan twice since our independence for professional reasons, and I have to repeat that the ruling elite is keen to undermine Bangladesh; but doing so by supporting war criminals is something different.

By blatantly supporting war criminals who were their collaborators during the independence war, Pakistan is only confirming that it perpetuated crimes against humanity in 1971 in a planned way, and it would do so again if it got another chance. Its brute soldiers and collaborators raped some 250,000 women in a planned way, hoping to change the population balance like the Nazis.

But it failed. The killings were in vain. Bangladesh emerged as a proud independent country. And thanks to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for recognising the war women as freedom fighters. Nobody could take their honour. I salute the war women for surviving the nine months of war in the hands of the Pakistani army,

Morten Koch Andersen is PhD Fellow, Roskilde University Denmark, and a researcher at DIGNITY – Danish Institute Against Torture.

E

Lovers of war criminals his past week, the Bangladesh Foreign Ministry sent a diplomatic note to the Pakistan High Commission in Dhaka strongly protesting the recent adoption of a resolution by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) Provincial Assembly of Pakistan on the convictions of war criminals in Bangladesh.

A minister of foreign affairs statement said Dhaka “deplored the adoption of the said resolution by the KPK Assembly” and it “was a brazen denial of justice for the victims of the heinous crimes committed by the convicted individuals and that the KPK Assembly chose to speak for Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami.”

“The KPK Assembly was advised not to make such sweeping, biased, misinformed, and politically motivated remarks about the independent legal system of a foreign country. By doing so, the KPK Assembly seriously undermined its standing as a responsible, credible, and representative body speaking on behalf of its constituency,” the note added.

political youth are linked to the parties in different ways, where can ideas of a future beyond the vocabulary of the liberation war emerge? The current political leadership, or their followers?

Student youth have played essential roles in the creation of Bangladesh as an independent nation, and have always been at the frontline to defend state and democracy. Today, youth are the majority of the population.

What are their perspectives of the future, and how are they represented in politics?

The challenge is not to convict war criminals at trials; the challenge is to think what comes after. One could wait until the processes are completed, which could take some years, or begin to prepare for a future, in the present. l

who should try to work to improve its image as criminals in uniforms.

Why do they keep on targeting their sympathy for the collaborators, and not the Urdu-speaking Biharis, who also sided with them, and still live in camps? They should be more bothered about taking these stranded Pakistanis back home as a prize for their loyalty in 1971. They still fly Pakistani flags.

With the Saarc summit underway in the Himalayan beauty Nepal, such developments in Pakistan against Bangladesh makes its participation in the event only a farce.

I am told that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina chose not to meet her Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif in the sidelines of the Saarc summit as is the custom, because of Islamabad’s silence on the above developments. If it is true, then I think it is the right decision.

Unless Nawaz Sharif had allowed these elements to interfere in Bangladesh’s internal affairs, especially with regards to war crimes, it would have been impossible that his home minister could make comments against the war trials.

It is high time Pakistan becomes civilised enough to seek apology from Bangladesh and accept the fact that they are dealing with an independent Bangladesh, and not East Pakistan.

To my Pakistani friends: Prevail upon your government as well as the handfuls to accept the reality and act accordingly, or remain as “lovers” of war criminals. l Nadeem Qadir, a senior journalist, is a UNCA Dag Hammarskjold Scholar in journalism.

s I come to the last day of the week, I find certain developments disturbing me.

Firstly, the murder of the professor at Rajshahi University. Within a few hours of the gruesome act, all fingers were pointed at the student wing of Jamaat, which was to be expected, considering other murders committed on that campus where the victims were teachers with a progressive agenda and the Jamaat-Shibir activists were found to be the perpetrators.

Should the state machinery delve into speculations? Some highly placed government ministers and other high-ups made bold statements as to such links, some discussants on TV even acting as judge, jury, and executioners in the media. Jumping to conclusions is rash.

All this happened before law enforcers even completed their work.

And then what do we see? The police arrests some people and toe the line of the government, and stick to the “official” line of the complicity of radical Islamists in the matter. On the other hand, RAB comes up with a few others – arrested and presented in front of the camera; these arrested ones assert that the murder was a result of personal enmities.

This dichotomy between the police and RAB brings many questions. Are the regular police acting towards a conclusion expected by the government in power? Is RAB on a collision course with the police, or is the discord between the two branches of law enforcers reaching a boiling point?

Wouldn’t it have been better for the two branches to compare notes before they faced the media? Maybe if they had met and consulted among themselves about their arrests and other findings, they could have given a unified picture to the public instead of the mass confusion that prevails now among the common people. This is no way of law enforcement in my view.

Such lame methods may allow the actual criminal to go scot-free.

The second matter is the return of the prodigal son Latif Siddique. His words have offended the religious people of the country, and the government moved quickly in dismissing him from

all posts. One may question as to why such rapid action, but apparently that question is now taboo in Bangladesh.

I personally find his ramblings about religion in New York to be that of a man who has a loose tongue, and if I were religious and a devout believer with full understanding of what my religion says, I would have laughed it off. But that is not the case with millions of Muslims in this country who get riled up very easily.

When the participants of processions demand hanging of all apostates, are they within the law?

However, as a minister of an overwhelmingly Muslim majority country, he should have guarded his personal views on Islam, and he left the government no choice but to sack him. If he is an atheist or an agnostic, it’s his personal matter, but in today’s world of omnipresent media, a small gathering in New York does not avert the eyes of the ubiquitous cameras. It was a faux pas that would always have bitten him and finished his political career. The politicisation of the whole affair is what bothers me the most.

The main opposition party, BNP, started screaming and shouting from the very beginning like a teetotaler in a watering place. Some have even called for the enactment of a blasphemy law. Do these politicians realise the implications of such a law? I also note that some politicians of the treasury bench have also voiced such demands, including immediate hanging of Siddique. What kind of harebrained statements are these?

The Islamist parties which have gone dormant of late also got the chance to assert their regressive voices and demands at the failure of the law enforcers to arrest him at the airport.

Why would anyone give the Hefazatis a chance to raise their voices and to once again come up with their demands which would take the country several centuries back? It boggles the mind.

And when the bearded tupi-clad participants of processions demand hanging of all apostates, are they within the law of the land? Siddique may have said things that would offend the religious-minded people of the country, but is their (the “religious scholars” on the streets) faith so fickle that it would feel threatened by the rambling of one man? Are we in the times of the Inquisition?

Lastly is the case of the leaking of question papers at primary level exams. It was probably the most disturbing news of recent times. I was astonished to see TV reports and read the news items in the papers about the matter.

When I was in school (in the 70s), we often heard about cheating at SSC and HSC levels and that has been going on with various degrees of ubiquity over the decades, but this is the first time that I heard about such malpractice at primary or junior level exams. I have seen reports that gave avowals of tiny tots who said that their teachers told them what to expect in the question papers. Question papers of upcoming exams were found on the pages of social media.

Some have already jumped to massive government conspiracies being hatched to keep the majority of the people at a level of ignorance that would make them subservient to the power holders when they become adults. However, the fact remains that the pollution of the young minds that will inevitably happen because of these malpractices will bring doom to the future of the country.

The young of the country will bring prosperity to the country with their capacity to work harder than the older generation. A person who is 25 today will have approximately 30 years of working life ahead. If this generation of the twentysomethings fails to deliver, the aspirations of the nation will vaporise like camphor, and Bangladesh will fail to reach any of her goals. l

SM Shahrukh is a freelance contributor.

12

DHAKA TRIBUNE Friday, November 28, 2014

13 Mandzukic lifts

Atletico, Arsenal down Dortmund

14 Cricket world

mourns Hughes’ tragic death

14 Deaths caused

from on-field incidents

Sport

Tigers in a mood to experiment Bangladesh have already secured the one-day series with two matches left and the home side will be looking to continue their momentum in the fourth match against Zimbabwe today.

Though Bangladesh have lost 12 ODIs before the series this year, they seem to have gained the confidence as the selectors are already considering today’s encounter as a dead rubber and are poised for some experimental changes in the line-up.

Skipper Mashrafe bin Mortaza is likely to be rested as his deputy Shakib al Hasan will lead the Tigers while the latest inclusions – Taijul Islam and Abul Hasan – are also very likely to play the match.

Left-arm spinner Arafat Sunny, who claimed consecutive four-wicket hauls in the second and third ODI, was replaced by Taijul who is also in prime form and has the best bowling figures for Bangladesh in a Test match. Meanwhile, with the Australian conditions in mind the Tigers think tank should play three seamers and Hasan should play as well.

The most surprising package on the day could be the debut of Soumya Sarkar as sources revealed the left-handed

Ronaldo has scored more away goals (37) than any other player in the Uefa Champions League. Messi is at 2nd position (34)

BCB, Mushfiq, Shakib pay tribute to Hughes n Tribune Desk

BANGLADESH v ZIMBABWE, 4TH ODI

n Mazhar Uddin

Did you know?

batsman who also bowls medium pace has a strong chance of playing in place of Mahmudullah.

Despite an impressive Test series, young leg spinner Jubair Hossain and top order batsman Imrul Kayes might have to sit out once again.

However, as Mashrafe has repeatedly said “there is no room for relaxation”, the Tigers should not take the match lightly as they should know very well how hard it is to gain the momentum of a good-run once it is lost.

On the other hand, visiting Zimbabwe will be looking to break the shackles and bag their first win in the tour. Though, it will be a tough task for the Zimbabweans who so far were not able to balance their performance with bat and ball at a time. When they bowled well they batted horribly and vice versa.

Captain Elton Chigumbura has been in good touch but he needs his seniors Brendan Taylor and Hamilton Masakadza to fire in order to avoid their route to a “Banglawash”.

Meanwhile, both teams will observe a minute’s silence prior to the start of the game and will wear black armbands as a mark of respect for Australia batsman Phillip Hughes, who died yesterday. l

In the wake of the sad demise of Australian cricketer Phillip Hughes, Bangladesh wicketkeeper Mushfiqur Rahim (2L) assesses Shakib al Hasan’s helmet in the presence of assistant and spin coach Ruwan Kalpage (2R) at SBNS yesterday MAINOOR ISLAM MANIK

The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) yesterday expressed its deepest condolences at the tragic demise of Australian cricketer Phillip Joel Hughes.

The 25-year old passed away yesterday at St Vincent’s hospital in Sydney, New South Wales following an injury on his neck which was incurred while playing a first-class match at Sydney Cricket Ground last Tuesday.

The president and directors of the BCB extended their heartfelt sympathies to the family of Hughes during this sorrowful time.

Bangladesh Test captain Mushfiqur Rahim in a message said, “Phillip Hughes was an embodiment of the fighting spirit and the world of cricket will miss him.

The news has come as a terrible shock.

Our thoughts are with Phillip’s family, friends and the Australian cricket fraternity. May his soul rest in peace.”

Bangladesh all-rounder Shakib al Hasan, who played alongside Hughes for Worcestershire in the English county circuit and Adelaide Strikers in the Big Bash, also expressed his sadness on his official Twitter page. “I cannot explain enough how traumatic this is for me, especially because I knew him personally as we played in the same team for Adelaide. Not only I lost a teammate, also lost a good friend! My prayers are with him and his family, rest in peace mate!” l

No more grouping, no more trouble: BCB chief Chopping some senior players was necessary, says Nazmul; Shakib’s overseas ban to be lifted n Minhaz Uddin Khan Bangladesh Cricket Board president Nazmul Hasan credited the initiatives taken by the board to break the “grouping” within the national cricketers and termed the decision as a major reason behind Bangladesh’s success in the ongoing home series against Zimbabwe.

Nazmul also hinted of lifting the ban on Shakib al Hasan – imposed due to severe indiscipline – for playing in the foreign leagues. He said that the world’s leading all-rounder has appealed to the board to grant him NOC (No Objection Certificate) for playing in domes-

tic competition outside Bangladesh and the board will make a decision on the issue in their next meeting. Meanwhile, speaking about the captaincy in the upcoming ICC Cricket World Cup in February, Nazmul said current Bangladesh ODI captain Mashrafe bin Mortaza is the first option.

The BCB chief pointed the senior members in the national team had build-up a culture to not allow new faces in the dressing room, which has now been eliminated by the board.

“Let’s take Mominul (Haque) for an example. He performed very well when he came into the team but he was kept

out of the playing 11 for many matches because you either had to drop Nasir (Hossain) or Mahmudullah, which the team didn’t want to happen,” said Nazmul.

Explaining further on the issue Nazmul said, “Abdur Razzak had to be replaced to allow a new spinner.

This is why we (BCB) had to make an effort to rectify the senior cricketer’s behaviour.”

“There were few other issues in the dressing which we thought will hamper the team in future. A new player despite performance was not getting chance in the team as a senior player

needed to be removed. So we had to take many decisions to end the trend and bring in changes,” said the BCB boss.

Nazmul strongly believed the changes have affected the team and the players in a positive way and the result of the ‘team work’ is evident on the field.

Meanwhile, Nazmul said Shakib appealed for lifting the ban imposed on him two to three days back. “We have observed changes in Shakib for which we decided to lift his suspension in the national team and now its only a matter of time the board will also lift the ban from him playing in tournaments

in other countries. However a final decision will come on this in the board meeting,” he revealed.

Nazmul also informed Mashrafe to be a leading contender in captaining the side in the World Cup and also added that the news should please the veteran pacer who had to miss the previous edition of the world event, co-hosted by Bangladesh in 2011, due to injury. Sources revealed, the board is more than happy with Mashrafe’s leading capability who was made the captain just before the start of the ongoing home series against Zimbabwe while Shakib was named his deputy.

Ill-fated Sunny, Shafiul replaced n Reazur Rahman Rohan

Sk Jamal DC defenders keeping tabs on Mohun Bagan forward Pierre Boy in the King’s Cup in Bhutan yesterday

GOALNEPAL.COM

Jamal breeze past Mohun Bagan n Raihan Mahmood Bangladesh Premier League champions Sheikh Jamal Dhanmondi Club powered their way to the semifinals of the King’s Cup with a dominating 5-3 win over Kolkata giants Mohun Bagan at Thimphu, Bhutan yesterday.

Landing Darboe and Emeka Darlington registered a brace each while Wedson Anselme netted the other for Sheikh Jamal though the latter’s celebration was shortened due to the marching order he received in the dying minutes for his second bookable offence.

The facile victory saw Sheikh Jamal top the Group A with seven points and set up a semifinal date with defending champions Manang Marshyangdi

of Nepal tomorrow. The defeat, however, caused little trouble for Mohun Bagan as they too qualified for the last four stage and will meet another Indian powerhouse FC Pune in the second semifinal.

KING’S CUP

Sk Jamal

Emeka 5,54 Landing 16, 60 Wedson 31

5-3

Mohun Bagan Pankaj 56 Katsumi 58 Pierre 90+3

The match created a lot of hype due to Haitian striker Sony Norde who played for the Bangladeshi club last year before moving to Kolkata this year. However, for unknown reasons Norde was rested in the match.

Emeka put Jamal ahead in the 5th

minute before Landing doubled the joy in the 16th minute. Wedson converted a penalty in the 31st minute while Emeka added his second in the 54th minute to put Jamal on a four-goal cushion inside the hour mark.

Pankaj Moula reduced the margin scoring the first for the Kolkata outfits in the 56th minute before Japanese midfielder Katsumi Yusa spiced up the encounter by scoring the second just two minutes later.

However, a solo effort from Landing saw the difference increase to 5-2 in the 60th minute. Pierre Boya’s strike in the third minute of the five-minute stoppage time only reduced the deficit for Mohun Bagan while Jamal’s party was spoiled with the last minute sendoff of Wedson. l

Arafat Sunny, the highest wicket-taker following the first three ODIs, is the major name missing from the Bangladesh squad as the triumphant hosts take on a wretched Zimbabwe side in the fourth game of the five-match series in Mirpur today.

Just after the home side secured the third one-day international last Wednesday in Mirpur and subsequently the series, the Bangladesh Cricket Board announced two changes in the squad for the fourth and fifth game. Paceman Abul Hasan returned to the national setup after 20 months at the expense of the injured Shafiul Islam while left-arm spinner Taijul Islam replaced Sunny, who played a starring role in the 128-run victory two days ago with four wickets before being ousted from the squad.

The only justification for Sunny’s exclusion explained by the head coach was that he has seen enough of him and wants to explore other options keeping the 2015 ICC World Cup in mind. With veteran Abdur Razzak slowly fading away from the international scene, Taijul was an obvious selection but Sunny has every reason to feel upset and unlucky as he claimed 10 wickets in the first three ODIs. His economy rate was also well below three runs an over.

Sunny can only blame his fate while Shafiul continues to go in and out of the team due to injury.

Shafiul lingered off the field holding his leg after bowling just 2.2 overs last Wednesday. His injury opened up the door of opportunity for right-arm pace bowler Hasan as the other options –

Taskin Ahmed and Robiul Islam – are not fully fit while Shahadat Hossain has not been at his best in limited-over cricket.

Hasan’s last ODI appearance came in Sri Lanka last year following which he was ruled out with a back injury - the second time after making his debut in 2012. Since then his fitness has not been satisfactory. However, his recent five-wicket haul against Abahani Limited in a Dhaka Premier Division Cricket League match is probably the reason why the selectors picked him.

The 20-year-old Hasan is also known for his hard-hitting ability as he owns a century batting at No 10 in his debut Test match – the second person to do so in the history of five-day cricket.l

“I cannot confirm who will be the captain during the World Cup. They (Mashrafe and Shakib) have very good chances as they are getting the team results and it is very tough to make a change when this happens,” said Nazmul.

Meanwhile, the BCB has turned down invitations of playing tournaments in Dubai and Zimbabwe ahead of the World Cup as the BCB cricket operations has its own plan of preparing the team for the big event that includes sending the national side to Australia a month before the tournament to cope with the conditions. l

AHF U21 HOCKEY

Youngsters hoping to revel n Raihan Mahmood Patiently waiting for a chance to shine in national colours, the Bangladesh Under-21 hockey team will be eager to prove their worth in the upcoming AHF U-21 Cup to be held at Maulana Bhasani National Hockey Stadium from this Sunday.

The expectation was revealed yesterday by the head coach of the U-21 team Mamunur Rashid and skipper Mohammed Sarwar Hossain while reflecting upon the recently-concluded tour of India. The youngsters played seven matches in India and won six of them.

In the first match on November 5 the visitors trounced SAI Academy 5-1, the following day they thumped Centre of Excellence 6-1, on November 7 they strolled past Chandigarh XI 6-0, the following day they defeated Mohali XI 4-2, on November 10 they outplayed NIS 4-0, the following day they overpowered Jharkand XI 7-2 before losing their last match against Haryana XI 2-1.

Mamun praised his charges and said they are ready to represent the country at the national level. Bangladesh Hockey Federation (BHF) officials, Mamun and Sarwar thanked Islami Bank for extending their support as the sponsor. Abdus Sadek Bhuiyan, head of the bank’s development wing and Rafiul Islam, Wing Commander and spokesperson of the BHF president were present in the programme.

In the meantime, most of the national players apart from Pushkor Khisa Mimo and Hasan Jubair Niloy reported to Mamun yesterday. The national camp for the upcoming Hockey World League round 2 will begin today. l

DHAKA TRIBUNE

Sport

13

Friday, November 28, 2014

Tamim and Masakadza fined for spat in third ODI n Tribune Desk

Zimbabwe batsman Hamilton Masakadza bats while head coach Stephen Mangongo keeps during their visit to the Cardiff International School Dhaka in Dhanmondi yesterday

Excited Hasan relishing return n Minhaz Uddin Khan Bangladesh paceman Abul Hasan expressed his excitement after getting a call-up to the national squad following a 20-month hiatus. The 22-year old pacer replaced fellow seamer Shafiul Islam who suffered a grade-one quadriceps strain on his right thigh during the third one-day international against Zimbabwe in Mirpur last Wednesday.

Hasan was one of two changes drafted by the national selection panel.

The other change was that of left-arm spinner Arafat Sunny who made way for Taijul Islam.

Taking into consideration the conditions in Australia and New Zealand, the two host countries of next year’s ICC World Cup, Bangladesh are currently looking for a seamer-allrounder, another reason why Hasan is being considered for the fourth ODI in Mirpur today.

An elated Hasan stated his delight at the call-up. “I am thankful to the Al-

mighty for allowing me to come back in the international circuit after such a long gap.”

Hasan made a flying start to his international career slamming a record century in his debut Test match batting at No 10. However, a back injury and a subsequent operation kept him off the field for more than 12 months.

Hasan, a right-arm pacer and a lefthanded batsman, informed that he is confident of making a solid comeback and is targeting a spot in the World Cup squad.

As far as the ongoing ODI series against Zimbabwe is concerned, Hasan said Bangladesh is eyeing a series sweep in the five-match series having clinched the series last Wednesday in the third game.

Meanwhile, Zimbabwe opener Hamilton Masakadza has termed the 45-day long tour of the Southern African nation a “frustrating” one. The 31-year old said, “It’s been a frustrating tour for

us, things have not gone our way, that does get to you a little bit towards the end I guess.

“But we still have two games to play and it’s obviously very big for us,

n Reuters

Play was called off in the third Test between Pakistan and New Zealand in Sharjah on Thursday following the

DAY’S WATCH BTV, Gazi TV 12:30PM Bangladesh v Zimbabwe 4th ODI

Ten Cricket 12:00PM Pakistan v New Zealand 3rd Test, Day 2

Star Sports 2 7:30PM Indian Super League Delhi v Mumbai 1:40 AM La Liga Real Sociedad v Elche

Star Sports 1, HD 1 Indian Premier Tennis League 2:00 PM

Sony Six 9:30 PM Ram Slam T20 Challenge Warriors v Cape Cobras

Rupganj taste first loss Prime Bank, Kalabagan CA continue winning

n Minhaz Uddin Khan Defending champions and table-toppers Legends of Rupganj tasted their first defeat of the Dhaka Premier Division Cricket League 2014-15 season after suffering a five-wicket loss at the hands of Brothers Union in round six at BKSP 3 yesterday.

In the other matches of the day, joint leaders Prime Bank beat Prime Doleshwar by six wickets at BKSP 4 while Kalabagan Cricket Academy coasted to a 96-run win over Sheikh Jamal Dhanmondi Club in Fatullah.

Rupganj v Brothers Union, BKSP 3

Bangladesh paceman Abul Hasan stretches his leg during a practice session at SBNS yesterday MAINOOR ISLAM MANIK

Pakistan-NZ Test’s day two deferred shocking death of Australian cricketer Phillip Hughes, which left the tourists in no mood to play.

The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) and New Zealand Cricket (NZC) agreed to

we will try to get something out of the two games, like I said we haven’t really got anything from this tour so at least we can get something towards the end,” he added. l

MAINOOR ISLAM MANIK

suspend the second day’s play and finish the Test on Monday instead of Sunday.

“Today isn’t about cricket, it’s about Phil,” New Zealand coach Mike Hesson said in a statement.

“Like the rest of the cricketing family, the Blackcaps players and management are devastated to hear about Phil’s tragic passing. It’s an unthinkable loss and I can tell you it’s an incredibly sombre dressing room right now.

“To those who were close to Phillip, we extend our deepest sympathies.

Our thoughts are with you during this extremely difficult time.”

“Today will be treated as a rest day, and the Test will resume tomorrow and conclude a day later than scheduled,” NZC said in a post on their official Twitter feed.l

Fractured cheekbone lucky escape : Shehzad

n Reuters, Karachi Pakistan Test opener Ahmed Shehzad knows he had a lucky escape when a short-pitched ball cracked his cheekbone earlier this month and says he “froze” when he heard the news of Australian batsman Phil Hughes’ death on Thursday.

“I froze when I heard this tragic news and my heart went out to his family because I have been very fortunate to be on my feet again,” Shehzad said on Thursday.

Shehzad suffered a hairline fracture of his cheekbone after being hit by a short-pitched ball from New Zealand’s Corey Anderson on November. 10th. l

Twin half-centuries and a joint effort by the bowlers saw Brothers register only their second victory of the campaign in a low-scoring game.

Asked to bat first, Legends of Rupganj were all out for a disappointing 192 in 49.1 overs. Mosharraf Hossain’s 87-ball 80 was the highest score of the innings followed by Jahurul Islam’s 44.

Among the seven bowlers deployed by Brothers, six of them picked up at least one wicket with Asif Hasan (3/21) leading the way.

In pursuit of a modest 193 for an unlikely win, Brothers chased down the target in 47.2 overs with five wickets intact. Skipper Nazim Uddin and Joe Denly propelled the chase with 51 runs apiece.

Prime Bank v Prime Doleshwar, BKSP 4

Title contender Prime Bank’s win over Prime Doleshwar enabled the former to join Legends of Rupganj at the top of the points table with 10 points each.

Batting first, Prime Doleshwar posted 190 before losing all of their wickets in 48 overs. Dawid Malan’s 89-ball 70, including five fours and two sixes, lent respectability to Prime Doleshwar’s total. Enamul Haque Jr

Mandzukic lifts Atletico, Arsenal down Dortmund n AFP, Paris

Croatia striker Mario Mandzukic blasted a hat-trick as last year’s beaten finalists Atletico Madrid booked their place in the knock-out rounds of the Champions League with a 4-0 win over Olympiakos on Wednesday.

Juventus are in pole position to join the Spanish champions in qualifying from Group A after goals from Spaniard Fernando Llorente and Argentina’s Carlos Tevez gave them a 2-0 win at Malmo, who are eliminated.

Olympiakos can still qualify in second place but must beat Malmo at home in two weeks time and hope Juve lose to Atletico in Italy.

Raul Garcia opened the scoring for Atletico before Mandzukic took over but the Spaniards still need a draw against Juve in Turin in two weeks - or a defeat by no more than one goal - to

finish top of Group A. Arsenal, who had lost their two previous matches in the league to Swansea and Manchester United, were another side to secure a last 16 berth as Yaya Sanogo scored his first goal for the club.

His strike, just two minutes in, followed by a second-half goal from Alexis Sanchez, helped the north Londoners to a 2-0 win over Borussia Dortmund at the Emirates, although the Germans still lead Group D by two points.

Two goals from Chancel Mbemba gave Anderlecht their first win of the group stage with a 2-0 success against Galatasaray that secured them the consolation place in the Europa League.

Title-holders Real Madrid continued their perfect record in this season’s competition as Cristiano Ronaldo netted in a 1-0 Group B win at Basel.

That goal, set up by Karim Benzema, took Ronaldo level with former Real star Raul on 71 Champions League goals, second only to Lionel Messi, whose hat-trick on Tuesday took him

on to 74 goals.

The result gave a boost to Liverpool’s chances of qualifying for the last 16

RESULTS

Malmo

0-2

Juventus

Llorente 49, Tevez 88

Atletico Madrid

4-0

Olympiakos

0-1

Real Madrid

Raul Garcia 9, Mandzukic 38, 62, 65

Basel

Ronaldo 35

Razgrad

2-2

Abalo 3, Terziev 88

Leverkusen

Liverpool Lambert 8, Henderson 37

0-1

Monaco Ocampos 72

Zenit

1-0

Benfica

2-0

Dortmund

2-0

Galatasaray

Danny 79

Arsenal Sanogo 2, Sanchez 57

Anderlecht Mbemba 44, 86

Bangladesh opening batsman Tamim Iqbal and Zimbabwe opener Hamilton Masakadza were reprimanded for their unsporting behaviour on the field during the third ODI in Mirpur last Wednesday.

The Bangladesh Cricket Board, through a media release yesterday, informed that Tamim was fined 15 percent of his match fee after being found guilty of a Level 1 breach of the International Cricket Council’s (ICC’s) code of conduct following an incident during the fifth over of Zimbabwe’s innings.

Left-handed batsman Tamim admitted the charge and accepted the sanction imposed by Sri Lanka’s Ranjan Madugalle of the Elite Panel of ICC Match Referees.

Tamim was found to have breached Level 1 Article 2.1.4 of the ICC’s code of conduct for Players and Player-Support Personnel, which states that it is an offence to use language or a gesture that is obscene, offensive or insulting during an international match.

Meanwhile, Masakadza also received an official reprimand after being found to have breached Level 1 Article 2.1.8 of the ICC’s code of conduct for Players and Player-Support Personnel.

The charges were leveled by on-field umpires Anisur Rahman and Chris Gaffaney and third-umpire Sharfuddoula Ibn Saikat. l

despite the English side being pegged back by a late Georgi Terziev leveller in a 2-2 draw at Bulgarians Ludogorets.

Liverpool and Ludogorets trail Basel by two points in the race for second place but the English side know they must win at Anfield in two weeks time to ensure they progress, or else Basel’s name will go into the draw for the last 16.

Ludogorets are out as they cannot finish above either Liverpool and Basel, even in the unlikely event they were to win at the Bernabeu in their last match.

Rickie Lambert’s first Champions League goal followed by a strike from Jordan Henderson, teed up by Raheem Sterling, put the visitors in the driving seat by half-time, but they couldn’t hold out.

Bayer Leverkusen added their name to the last 16 qualifiers despite being beaten 1-0 at home to Monaco in Group C. Lucas Ocampos scored the only goal of the game in Germany 18 minutes from time from close range after being teed up by Nabil Dirar.l

was the wrecker in chief for Prime Bank taking four wickets conceding 37 runs.

In reply, opening batsman Soumya Sarker’s 55 and Shuvagata Hom’s unbeaten 51 guided Prime Bank to the target in 45.3 overs with six wickets remaining.

Sk Jamal DC v Kalabagan CA, Fatullah

Kalabagan CA won their third match in succession thumping Sheikh Jamal by 96 runs.

Kalabagan CA scored the highest total of the day, 239/8, with skipper Mahmudul Hasan blasting 81. Nafees Iqbal scored 64 while Nazmul Hossain smashed an unbeaten 46 off just 19 balls. Sheikh Jamal off-spinner Sohag Gazi, who took five wickets at the expense of 63 runs, went in vain as they were dismissed for 143 in 40 overs.

Mohammad Sharif and Bishwanath Halder shared six wickets between them to take Kalabagan CA to third position with eight points. l

BRIEF SCORES Brothers v Rupganj Rupganj: 192 allout in 49.1 overs (Mosharraf 80, Jahurul 44, Asif 3/21) Brothers: 194/5 in 47.2 overs (Nazim 51, Denly 51, Mosharraf 2/27) Brothers Union won by 5 wickets

Prime Bank v Prime Doleshwar Doleshwar: 190 allout in 48 overs (Malan 70, Enamul Jr 4/37, Taijul 2/35) Bank: 192/4 in 45.3 overs (Shuvagata 51*, Soumya 55, Sanjamul /53) Prime Bank won by 6 wickets

Sheikh Jamal DC v Kalabagan CA Kalabagan: 239/8 in 50 overs (Mahmudul 81, Nafees 64, Nazmul 46*, Gazi 5/63) Jamal: 143 allout in 40 overs (Amit 51, Sharif 3/22, Bishwanath 3/8) Kalabagan CA won by 96 runs

England lose despite Moeen ton n AFP, Colombo Sri Lanka overcame a brilliant century

by Moeen Ali and a late cameo from Ravi Bopara to defeat England by 25 runs in the first one-day international in Colombo on Wednesday.

Opener Ali smashed 119 off 87 balls with 11 boundaries and five sixes as the tourists made a spirited chase of Sri Lanka’s 317-6 before being bowled out for 292 in the day-night match.

The left-hander’s maiden one-day hundred was followed by Bopara’s 65 off 62 balls in the end overs that left England on the doorstep of victory in the first match of the seven-game series.l

BRIEF SCORES Sri Lanka: 317 for 6 (Dilshan 88, Perera 59; Tredwell 2-52) England: 292 all out (Moeen 119, Bopara 65; Perera 3-44) Sri Lanka won by 25 runs

14

DHAKA TRIBUNE

Sport

Friday, November 28, 2014

CAREER STATISTICS

PHILLIP HUGHES 1988-2014

Tests ODIs T20Is First-class List A Twenty20

Mat Inns 26 49 25 24 1 1 114 209 91 89 34 34

NO Runs HS Ave BF SR 2 1535 160 32.65 2866 53.55 1 826 138* 35.91 1100 75.09 0 6 6 6.00 8 75.00 15 9023 243* 46.51 15798 57.11 12 3639 202* 47.25 4671 77.90 8 1110 87* 42.69 947 117.21

100 3 2 0 26 8 0

50 7 4 0 46 23 10

CAREER MILESTONES player to achieve the feat, breaking George Headley’s 79-year-old record.

1988, NOVEMBER 30: Born in Macksville, New South Wales. Hughes grew up on the family’s banana farm, developed into a left-handed batsman and moved to Sydney at 16 to further his cricketing ambitions.

2010: Reduced to back-up Test opener

after a torrid 2009 Ashes series in England, gets a rare chance against New Zealand in Wellington and hammers 86 off just 75 balls to see Australia across the winning line.

2007, NOVEMBER: Makes first-class debut for New South Wales against Tasmania in Sydney a few days before his 19th birthday, scoring 51 off 199 balls as NSW win by an innings.

2011: Regains his place for the threematch series in Sri Lanka and in the final Test scores 126, his third century at the highest level, as Australia bat out a draw against Sri Lanka in Colombo.

2009, FEBRUARY: Makes Test debut for Australia against South Africa in Johannesburg. Lasts just four balls in his first knock against the pace of Dale Steyn, but bounces back with 75 in the second as Australia win.

2013, JANUARY: Makes ODI debut against Sri Lanka in Melbourne and scores a fine 112.

2014, OCTOBER: Plays his only Twenty20 International against Pakistan in Dubai, scoring six runs as Australia win.

2009, MARCH: Scores a century in

both innings (115 and 160) in the second Test in Durban - at 20, the youngest

Cricket world mourns n AFP, Sydney Players and politicians expressed shock and grounds fell silent on Thursday as the cricket world plunged into mourning after the death of Australian batsman Phillip Hughes.

Ripples from the demise of Hughes, two days after he was knocked unconscious by a cricket ball, quickly spread across the planet as the sport reeled from a rare death in competition.

Australian legend Adam Gilchrist summed up the shock at Hughes’s death with a tweet that read: “No no no no no. RIP Phillip Hughes.”

The batsman collapsed on field during a Sheffield Shield match in Sydney and underwent emergency surgery, but he never regained consciousness.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Hughes “was a young man living out his dreams. His death is a very sad day for cricket and a heartbreaking

day for his family.”

Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath were among the Australian greats to send condolences along with national coach Darren Lehmann, who tweeted: “RIP you little champ, we are all going to miss you!”

And Indian superstar Sachin Tendulkar led a wave of sympathy from abroad as he saluted Hughes, his former team-mate in the Indian Premier League.

“Shocked to hear about Phil. Sad day for cricket,” Tendulkar said.

Former South African wicketkeeper Mark Boucher, who was forced to retire in 2012 after being hit in the eye by a bail while wicketkeeping, tweeted that he was “lost for words”.

International Cricket Council chief executive David Richardson said: “All those who play, have played or are in any way connected to the game are devastated by the news.”

There was also sympathy for New

‘Freakish accident’ gave little chance of survival “I think in this instance, this was a freakish accident because it was an injury to the neck that caused haemorrhage in the brain. The condition is incredibly rare,” Cricket Australia doctor Peter Brukner told a media conference at the hospital.

The injury, called a subarachnoid haemorrhage, occurs when an artery is compressed and splits, forcing blood into the brain area. Only one case had previously been reported as a result of a cricket ball, said Brukner.

Such catastrophic injuries were fre-

quently fatal at the time, but Hughes was resuscitated on the field and taken to hospital in a “reasonable condition,” he added.

Tony Grabs, the head of trauma surgery at St Vincent’s Hospital, said Hughes was taken quickly to surgery where part of his skull was removed to relieve pressure on his brain.

“Over a period of the first 24 to 48 hours, as we know, he did not make very much improvement and unfortunately as a consequence of the injury he died,” Grabs said.

South Wales paceman Sean Abbott, who bowled the ball that felled Hughes.

“How will he will continue? He is dealt a blow to his career and he needs counselling, which I am sure must have started, and needs to stay calm,” former Pakistan fast bowler Waqar Younis told AFP. Former England captain Andrew Strauss, who played alongside Hughes at Middlesex, led British tributes, describing the news as “sickening”.

Middlesex Cricket Club announced that flags at Lord’s would be lowered in Hughes’s memory, while fans left flowers at the ground’s Grace Gates.

The MCC president, David Morgan, said: “Phillip was a fine cricketer and one who we will tragically never have the chance to see batting again here at the home of cricket.”

Giles Clarke, chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), said his organisation extended its “deepest sympathies and heartfelt condolences” to Hughes’s friends and family.

England players past and present took to Twitter to express their shock at the news.

“Absolutely devastated to hear that Phil has passed away. Thoughts and prayers with his family and friends,” wrote England batsman Ian Bell.

Former England batsman Kevin Pietersen also spared a thought for Sean Abbott, writing: “NO NO NO NO NO! RIP, Hughsey #63notout. Sean Abbott thinking about you too, mate!”

England’s Ian Bell tweeted: “Please spare a thought for Sean Abbott too.

Horrendous.” l

1

5

2

4

3

1 The parents of Phil Hughes, father Greg (L) and mother Virginia (2R) with other family members leave St. Vincent’s hospital yesterday 2 Australian bowler Sean Abbott (R) leaves St Vincent’s hospital following the death of Hughes yesterday 3 Former Australian cricket captain Ricky Ponting (2R) hugs fellow players outside St Vincent’s hospital yesterday 4 Australian batsman David Warner (R) with

partner Candice Falzon (2R) leave St Vincent’s hospital with Australia wicketkeeper Matthew Wade (L) and his partner Julia Barry (2L) yesterday 5 Australian batsman George Bailey leaves St Vincent’s hospital yesterday in a disconsolate mood AFP

DEATHS CAUSED FROM ON-FIELD INCIDENTS

2014: PHILLIP HUGHES (Australia, 25) The Australia batsman was stuck on the neck by a short-pitched delivery while batting in a domestic match. Hughes was treated by the boundary before being rushed to hospital, where he died after two days.

2009: ALCWYN JENKINS (England, 72)

2013: DARRYN RANDALL (S Africa, 32) The wicketkeeper-batsman was stuck on the side of the head while attempting a pull shot during a domestic match in South Africa. He collapsed at the crease and was rushed to a hospital but could not be revived.

2006: WASIM RAJA (Pakistan, 54) 2013: ZULFIQAR BHATTI (Pakistan, 22)

2012: RICHARD BEAUMONT (England, 33)

The youngster was stuck on his chest and collapsed to the ground while batting during a club game in Sukkur, a district in Pakistan’s Sindh province. He was taken to the hospital but pronounced dead on arrival.

The fast bowler collapsed and died from a suspected heart attack shortly after taking five wickets in a club match.

Beaumont was airlifted to Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth but pronounced dead shortly after his arrival.

The former Pakistan batsman, who was later an ICC match referee, died while playing for Surrey Over 50s at Marlow in Buckinghamshire. He suffered a heart attack and collapsed on the field.

The umpire was struck on the head by a throw from one of the fielders while officiating in a league match in Swansea.

He was airlifted to a hospital but failed to recover.

1993: IAN FOLLEY (England, 30)

1870: GEORGE SUMMERS (England, 25)

The left-arm spin bowler was hit under the eye trying to play a hook shot in a domestic match.

He later suffered a heart attack while under anaesthetic in hospital.

Summers died from a blow on the head while batting for Nottinghamshire against the MCC at Lord’s.

He died a few days later due to the injury.

1998: RAMAN LAMBA (India, 38) The former India opener suffered brain injuries after being hit on the head while fielding at short-leg during a club match in Dhaka.

1942: ANDY DUCAT (England, 56) 1989: WILF SLACK (England, 34) The Middlesex and England left-handed opener suddenly collapsed and died while batting in Banjul, capital of The Gambia. He had suffered four blackouts on the field in the past but tests failed to ascertain the cause of his death.

1959: ABDUL AZIZ (Pakistan, 18) The wicketkeeper collapsed while batting after being hit in the chest in a domestic match in Karachi.

He was declared dead on arrival at the hospital.

The batsman, who played one Test for England, collapsed and died of a heart attack during a game at Lord’s.

DHAKA TRIBUNE

Entertainment

Friday, November 28, 2014

15

Performing today

B E N G A L C L A S S I C A L M U S I C F E S T I VA L 2 0 1 4

Rahul Sharma, santoor

Rahul Sharma has carved a niche for himself in the world of Indian classical and fusion world music, with more than 50 released albums spanning a career of 15 years. He learnt music and the santoor from his father and guru Pandit Shivkumar Sharma, a legend in India.

Pandit Umakant Gundecha and Pandit Ramakant Gundecha, vocal

Rajan and Sajan Mishra, vocal

Rajan and Sajan Mishra are brothers who are renowned singers of the Khyal style of Indian classical music. They were brought up in Varanasi and received their training from a very musical family: grandfather Bade Ram Das Ji Misra, father Pandit Hanuman Prasad Misra and uncle Pandit Gopal Prasad Misra, a sarangi virtuoso.

Supriya Das, vocal

Indian artist Ajinkya Joshi on tabla graced the stage at the inaugural ceremony of Bengal Classical Music Festival 2014 yesterday

Instruments of beauty: Mridangam Enjoy Carnatic music today by Karaikudi Mani

Also known as Karnataka samgita, carnatic music is one of two main sub-genres of Indian classical music, based predominantly in southern India, distinct from the Persian influenced music of the north.

The main emphasis in Carnatic music is vocal. Konnakol is the art of performing percussion syllables vocally.

Mridangam is the primary rhyth-

mic accompaniment in carnatic music. The double-sided drum is usually made from jackfruit wood.

Each end has a hole of different width, partially covered with goatskin painted with a black tuning paste, known as the satham or karanai, which and gives the mridangam its distinct metallic timbre.

Compared to the tabla, it has a much more complex harmonic spectrum and a significantly reduced sustain. Since the mridangam uses a single resonator, the tension of the left and right sides are inseparably linked, producing an acoustic coupling between the two heads.

Nobel Prize–winning physicist CV Raman’s research on acoustics included a study of the harmonic nature of the table mridangam and tabla. l

KHAN HASAN MD RAFI

Known as the Gundecha Brothers, Umakant and Ramakant were introduced to music by their parents, and are leading dagarvani dhrupad (devotional music) singers. They received conventional university educations before moving to Bhopal in 1981 to train for four years under dhrupad masters.

Supriya Das was born in 1990 in Sylhet. Initiation into music began when her mother took her to Pandit Ramkanai Das in 2000. The young vocalist is the recipient of a Bengal Foundation scholarship. Supriya is an MBA final part student at SUST. Other artists to perform includes: Gautam Sarkar, tabla l Md Zakir Hosen, tabla l Enamul Haque, mridangam l Bishwajit Natta, tabla l Abir Hossain, sarod l Karaikudi R Mani, mridangam and konnakol

AJOY CHAKRABARTY: Classical music is infinite, time-tested n Badiuzzaman Bay

How do you view music in Bangla?

Pandit Ajoy Chakrabarty, the Hindustani classical vocalist, is touring Bangladesh to attend this weekend’s Bengal Classical Music Festival.

Considered one of the vocal legends of Indian classical music, Ajoy was born in Kolkata in 1953, after his family moved to India from present-day Bangladesh during partition. He belongs to the Patiala gharana and has over 100 albums to his credit.

Prior to his performance yesterday at the Army Stadium, the singer met with Dhaka Tribune for an interview.

You have now been part of all three of Bengal’s music festivals. How does it feel to return to the land of your ancestors?

It feels like homecoming. There is the satisfaction of performing a duty, and when it comes to hospitality, I think no

All sorts of music and compositions are possible in Bangla, and that’s the beauty of this language.

You don’t see such flexibility in other languages. It is for this reason, and the inherent genius of some of its speakers, that we have had such talents as Kazi Nazrul Islam and Rabindranath Tagore.

one can beat Bangladeshis.

I love everything about this nation.

There is no one like them, so gentle and hospitable. Paying respect to guests and elders comes naturally to them.

One thing I must say: Performing in the Bengal festival is a privilege in itself – it’s the largest of such festivals in the world, and the crowd is really amazing.

You founded a classical music academy more than two decades ago, and have numerous disciples.

Yes I have, and I am still learning.

And teaching also. Shrutinandan, my school, has more than 1000 students devoted to classical music. I’m also conducting online classes, where students from anywhere in the world can participate and ask questions. Music has such a transcending power, you know, and it touches hearts. I’m working to take that spirit to the younger generations.

There is growing apprehension that classical music is receding, and might not survive the onslaught of more popular contemporary genres.

Do you agree?

Not at all. The very fact that the Bengal festival has stepped into its third year – and the kind of curiosity it generated – is proof to the contrary. Last year’s festival saw an overwhelming 30,000-strong crowd on a single day, nearly 40% of whom were young people. You’ll see new forms of music coming every now and then, but classical music is different. It’s infinite, time-tested.

What’s your plan for this year’s trip?

I will probably visit my ancestral home in the village of Pushuli, in Mymensingh. I also have plans to go to Cox’s Bazar. I went to Chittagong before, but this year I won’t have time. l

Exhibition of noted artists on display n Mona Mehzabin Baishakhi

Shakib Al Hasan’s wife SHISHIR to catwalk with MALAIKA in Dhaka n Entertainment Desk Shishir Al Hasan, the spouse of the world’s number one all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan, will be dazzling the audience along with Malaika Arora Khan of Bollywood at the “Pond’s Presents The Lustrous Runway” at the Radisson Blu Water Garden Hotel ballroom today.

Featuring a talented pool of designers, gorgeous international and local models, and celebrity showstoppers, the event has become a trendsetter

Exhibition

Life is Here

By Kanak Chanpa Chakma Time: 12pm – 8pm Bengal Art Lounge

Film

Korean Film Festival By the Korean Embassy Dhaka Time: 3pm – 8pm Bangladesh National Museum, Shahbag French Film Festival

By Renoir Film Club Time: 6pm – 8pm Alliance Francaise, Dhanmondi Interstellar, Gone Girl, Annabelle Onek Sadher Moyna Into The Storm Blockbuster Cinemas Jamuna Future Park

in the fashion world of Dhaka over the years.

Celebrity models will be setting the runway on fire showcasing sizzling wardrobes of renowned fashion designers including Nowshin Khair, Nuzhat Nawar, Sarah Karim, Mimel Nizam and Nadia Ali, Purvi Doshi and Farzana Nova. Shishir, a software engineer with gorgeous looks, will be walking as the showstopper for famed Indian designer Purvi Doshi.

The organisers said Malaika would be on stage to encourage the designers. After taking part in the event the Bollywood diva will fly back to India. l

Eva Mendes wants a private life with Ryan Gosling n Entertainment Desk Eva Mendes is notoriously private when it comes to her relationship with Hollywood heartthrob Ryan Gosling. And all that was stepped up a notch when the couple welcomed their daughter Esmeralda into the world in September. Now, the “Hitch” actress has opened up about becoming a mum and why she wants her little girl brought up away from the spotlight.

Talking to digital magazine Violet Grey in her first photoshoot since giving birth the 40-year-old star said: “I’m completely exhausted. I thought my wild nights were over but these are some of the wildest nights I’ve ever had.”

The stunning brunette went on to say how she and all round hunk Ryan made a conscious decision to keep her bump away from prying eyes. Eva said: “Whether we like it or not, privacy is going to be very difficult for Esmeralda. I think it’s unfair but that’s our reality. So Ryan and I decided early on to give her as much privacy as we could. And my pregnancy was the first opportunity to give her that.”

“So I made a decision to eject myself from it completely. I was like, ‘Annnnd I’m out,’” she reasoned. l

Forty noted artists – 39 painters and one sculptor – are displaying their works at a group art exhibition at Bishwo Sahitto Kendro in the capital. The exhibition is a part of a series featuring the forty artists by the Kendro. The on going exhibition is the second one while the first one was held in April.

The list includes eminent artists like Rokeya Sultana, Sheikh Afzal, Khalid Mahmud Mithu, Kanak Chapa Chakma, Nisar Hossain, Dilara Begum Jolly, Mohammad Iqbal, Mohammad Eunus, and Nasrin Begum among others. The exhibition also features works by late artists Anwarul Hoq, Kazi Abdul Baset, Shamsul Islam Nizami and Mahbubul Amin.

The paintings on display present a myriad style of expressions on an array of mediums. Late artist Anwarul Hoq’s “Jatrapala” done using oil on canvas depicts a scene in which some rural people are enjoying jatra beneath a canopy. A watercolour painting titled “Waterloo” by Mir Mostafa Ali portrays passengers waiting for a train on a platform

Tahader Kotha by Dilara Begum Jolly in Europe. Noted artist Nisar Hossain has painted hazy human and animal figures by means of acrylic colour on canvas in his “Mrittu Uppotokkay Ekti Sokal (A Morning at Valley of Death).”

Nazir Ahmed, on the other hand, depicts a portrait of late master artist and also his father Shafiuddin Ahmed in his digital artwork titled “Journey of a Great Master-7”. Sculptor Mostafa Sharif Anwar Tuhin’s stone-cut sculpture titled “Re-birth of Vishnu”, a statue of a partial human figure, is also on display at the exhibition.

The exhibition deals with varied themes including life struggle, women emancipation, nature and the liberation war of Bangladesh.

Kanak Chapa Chakma has portrayed a young indigenous girl in her vibrant mixed media painting “A Maiden’s World”. Artist Maniruzzaman has dealt with the liberation war in his acrylic painting “In Memory 71”, which demonstrates freedom fighters attacking the Pakistani occupational army with great valiance.

The exhibition, which began on November 14 will remain open from 3:00pm to 8:00pm till November 28. l

16

DHAKA TRIBUNE

Back Page

Friday, November 28, 2014

Experts question key traffic improvement moves Decentralising Dhaka and better coordination among regulatory bodies suggested n Abu Hayat Mahmud The government made three moves this month aimed at reducing traffic congestion and raising awareness of violation of traffic rules in the capital but experts have questioned the effectiveness of those.

Urban planners say the capital has returned to its previous state after the initiatives were no longer in effect. They, along with city dwellers, have also cast doubt on how successful the ongoing drive against jaywalking will be.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) on Tuesday initiated a week-long awareness campaign about complying with traffic rules while crossing roads and also the drive against jaywalkers at three points in the capital – Farmgate, Karwan Bazar and Banglamotor.

On November 9, countdown timers were started at 70 points in the capital, a move taken by the DMP in coordination with two city corporations. The automatic devices, however, are not producing the expected result as traffic police still maintain traffic at those points manually.

Also this month, the BRTA (Bangladesh Road Transport Authority) started a drive against 93,500 unfit motor vehicles in the capital. But it has been alleged the BRTA officials are issuing fitness certificates to vehicles without carrying out the necessary inspections. The unfit vehicles are now back on city roads.

According to urban planners, none of the moves would produce sustainable result if there is no coordination among Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripak-

Despite DMP’s ongoing drive against jaywalkers, pedestrians cross the streets without using foot over-bridges whenever they get a chance. The photo was taken from the Bangla Motor area yesterday MEHEDI HASAN kha (Rajuk), the two city corporations, the BRTA and the ministries concerned.

Professor Nazrul Islam, chairman of Centre for Urban Studies, told the Dhaka Tribune, a slew of unfit vehicles and traffic mismanagement are the key reasons for traffic jam in Dhaka.

He said Dhaka is home to a considerably large number of people as many come here from different parts of the country to work at government and private organisations and industries.

“The traffic problem will not be solved if the government does not take long-term steps for decentralisation. Besides, the government should establish separate lanes for buses and free up footpaths to let pedestrians use those,” Nazrul said.

Professor Dr Sarwar Jahan of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at Buet said Dhaka has become an unlivable city as the roads have excessive number of vehicles and about 1.5

crore people live here.

“The number of roads is inadequate and those are also very narrow compared to a planned city,” he said.

City corporation data shows Dhaka has over 50 footbridges and three underpasses. But almost all of those are occupied by hawkers and vendors while a few remain in a bad state due to a lack of supervision.

Even though pedestrians are supposed to walk on footpaths, more than

65% of those in the capital remain illegally occupied. City corporations and the DMP have failed to act on the High Court order to free up footpaths for pedestrians.

City corporation sources said around 108 kilometres out of a total of 163 kilometres in walkways in the capital are occupied by hawkers while around 600 kilometres out of 2,300 kilometres of roads have been encroached.

A study conducted by Work for Better Bangladesh in 2011 said only 18% of the capital’s footpaths were suitable for walking while the rest remained unusable for being used as car parks and by hawkers.

A total of 950 people were killed in the capital in road accidents between 2010 and 2014, and jaywalking led to most of the incidents, according to data from the DMP. City corporation officials told the Dhaka Tribune new footbridges would not be built because of the government’s future plans to introduce metro rail service and elevated expressway.

DMP additional commissioner (traffic) Mili Biswas told reporters on the first day of the drive against jaywalkers that remarking zebra crossings and renovating footbridges were discussed with the city corporation authorities, adding: “We have already begun freeing up footpaths at different spots in Dhaka.”

However, all the footpaths in Farmgate, one of the busiest areas in Dhaka, still remain occupied and no action has yet been taken to free those up. l

Firdausi Qadri named member of UN panel n Tribune Report Bangladeshi scientist Firdausi Qadri has been named a member of a high-level panel of the United Nations that will advise the UN chief on structural transformation and sustainable development using the latest technology in the least developed countries.

On Wednesday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced the formation of the 10-member panel, according to the UN website.

The panel will advise the UN chief on the organisational and operational aspects of a proposed Technology Bank and Science, Technology and Innovation Supporting Mechanism dedicated to the least developed countries (LDCs), it said.

Qadri is now working as the director for the Centre for Vaccine Sciences at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B).

Authorities of ICDDR,B, however, told the Dhaka Tribune that they did not get any official statement from the UN about the announcement.

She is now abroad, and scheduled get back to her regular office routine at the ICDDR,B from Sunday next, they said. l

Dr Milon’s sacrifice long neglected n Mohammad Al-Masum Molla

Sundarbans loses 130sq-km in 4 decades, says study n Abu Bakar Siddique The Sundarbans has lost almost 130 square-kilometres of area in its Bangladeshi portion due to erosion, said a Sparso study that analysed almost four decades of satellite data on the region.

The study “Time-series Analysis of Coastal Erosion in the Sundarbans Mangrove” found that from 1973-2010, approximately 233 sq-km of area has been lost exclusively to erosion while 104 sq-km of sea-water has been converted to vegetation by the mangrove.

The rate of coastal erosion, widespread in many parts of the peripheral zone, is variable in different parts of the forest. The average rates of erosion in the western and eastern parts of the forest are 14 metres and 15 metres per year respectively, the study measured.

A prior study, published in the journal “Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf science,” said between 1970-1990, The Sundarbans (in total, including Bangladeshi and Indian portions) had balanced out its erosion (32 sq-km) and accretion (29 sq-km), and only 3 sq-km of area was lost. That study found that between 1990-2000, the difference between erosion (42 sq-km) and accretion (6 sq-km) had increased seven times. Accretion is increase of land along the shores of a body of water, as by alluvial deposit.

The total area of vegetation in the

Sundarbans, listed in the study, in 2010 was 4,034 sq-km whereas in 1973, the area was 4,178 sq-km.

The Sparso (Bangladesh Space Research and Remote Sensing Organisation) study focused only on erosion as a cause for deforestation, and sought to determine its nature and pattern, but did not directly attribute causes like global warming, sea level rise, siltation from the Himalayan river system, or anthropogenic (man-made) hazards for this phenomenon. The scope of this study was limited to the Bangladeshi portion of the Sundarbans.

Speaking about the findings of the report, hydrology expert Professor Ainun Nishat said: “We have to acknowledge that the Sundarbans is under threat for different reasons including excessive human interventions and salinity intrusion that directly affects the different floral species of the mangrove forest by hindering their growth.”

Dr Ahsan Uddin Ahmed, a panelist at the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, opined that even though land erosion and accretion is nature’s law in an active river delta, forest land depletion due to human intervention should not be tolerated.

“If the projection of the study is true, then we have to be more conscious about protecting the forest from its threats,” warned Ahsan, also the executive director of Centre for Global Changes. l

Dr Shamsul Alam Khan Milon sacrificed his life in 1990 in the struggle for restoring democracy from the grasp of a military regime.

But 24 years later, not only has he become just another character from history lost in oblivion, but justice for his killing has also remained undelivered and democracy in the country now is nowhere near what he may have expected.

Just like every year, this year too, only a couple of hundred people seemed to have remembered the brave man, whose death on November 27, 1990, gave the pro-democracy movement a huge boost and military ruler HM Ershad was eventually dethroned only eight days later.

Floral wreaths, a few drops of unnoticed tears and regulation reminisces are all that Milon now gets every year for his stellar sacrifice in restoring democracy in the country.

Ershad and his dictatorial administration was largely blamed for killing Milon to foil the anti-establishment movement. But 24 years after the killing that shook the nation, not only is justice not ensured, even the real culprits have remained untraced.

Every year when Milon Day comes, political parties issue press releases and vow to safeguard democracy. In

discussions, leaders ask their supporters to follow Milon. These are pretty much all that the memories of Milon get; throughout the rest of the year, nobody cares about him.

Milon’s old and ailing mother Selina Akhter said instead of punishing the killers, the political parties have only cashed Milon’s sacrifice.

“But who will do it [punish the killers]? Everyone is doing politics with the masterminds of Milon killing,” she told the Dhaka Tribune in anger.

Selina, who has been silently shedding tears standing at the Milon intersection near TSC on the Dhaka University campus yesterday, still hopes that the killers of his son will be brought to justice one day.

In course of time, the Awami League and the BNP, who jointly waged a movement to topple Ershad from state power, have been using him as a bargaining tool. The former military ruler has not only enjoyed state power from 2009-2013 as part of the 9th parliament, he is now a special envoy to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Milon’s mother said: “My pain knows no bounds when I see the killers of my son enjoying state power. The two major political parties have always been desperately trying to get the autocrat on their sides.”

The Dhaka Tribune also talked to Mushtuq Husain, the plaintiff of the

Milon Murder case.

“On that day, I was at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital because I had become a father only five days before that. He [Milon] came to see my wife and kid in the hospital. He also came to the hospital to look after the people who got injured by police bullets on the streets during the movement.”

Then he left for the then PG Hospital, now the BSMMU, to attend a meeting.

He was accompanied by Dr Mustafa Jalal Mohiuddin, a former Awami League lawmaker and then a leader of the Bangladesh Medical Association (BMA).

When the rickshaw reached the TSC area, a bullet from a rilfe hit Milon. Crying in pain, Milon told Jalal: “Brother, something has hit my back.”

Milon was immediately taken to the DMCH emergency and there he passed away.

“I then filed a case with the Ramna police station within 24 hours,” Mushtuq said. “As it was a usual criminal case, enough evidence could not be produced before the court and the case was dismissed,” he said.

An application was submitted for reinvestigation but it never got any forward, he said.

On November 27, 1990, many, including the then BMA leader Dr Milon, was shot dead on the Dhaka University campus by criminals backed by dictator Ershad. l

Family members offer prayers and place floral wreaths at the grave of Dr Shamsul Alam Khan Milon on Dhaka Medical College campus, marking 24th anniversary of his martyrdom yesterday. Dr Milon, joint secretary general of Bangladesh Medical Association, was killed in 1990 during the anti-autocracy movement RAJIB DHAR

Australia’s Hughes dies after being hit by ball n Reuters, Sydney Australian cricketer Phillip Hughes died in a Sydney hospital yesterday, two days after being struck by a ball that led to a “catastrophic” injury which caused “massive” bleeding to his brain and ultimately proved fatal.

The international batsman was struck on the neck by a short-pitched delivery when batting in a domestic match on Tuesday, with the force of the blow piercing his vertebral artery, medical staff said at St Vincent’s hospital.

“The head injury he suffered was catastrophic,” Tony Grabs, director of Trauma at St Vincent’s, told reporters.

“He went to theatre and had extensive surgery to remove some of the skull around his brain to help allow the brain to expand so it wasn’t compressed.

“Over a period of the first 24-48 hours, as we know, he did not make very much improvement and unfortunately as a consequence of the injury he died.”

The Cricket Australia confirmed the 25-year-old had lost his fight for life with a tweet that cast a pall over a cricket-mad nation which is cohosting the World Cup early next year.

“The word tragedy gets used too often in sport, but this freak accident is now real life tragedy,” CA Chief Executive James Sutherland told reporters in a shaky voice.

The news brought an outpouring of grief on social media, with past and present players conveying their shock and passing on tributes.

“No no no no no. RIP Phillip Hughes,” former Australia wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist tweeted.

South Africa ODI captain AB de Villiers tweeted: “A very dark day. You will be missed, Phil Hughes. My prayers and thoughts go out to his family and friends.”

Australia Prime Minister Tony Abbott described Hughes as a “a young man living out his dreams.”

The shocking announcement followed calls by former players for the Australian team to abandon the first test of the four-match series against India next week. l

Editor: Zafar Sobhan, Published and Printed by Kazi Anis Ahmed on behalf of 2A Media Limited at Dainik Shakaler Khabar Publications Limited, 153/7, Tejgaon Industrial Area, Dhaka-1208. Editorial, News & Commercial Office: FR Tower, 8/C Panthapath, Shukrabad, Dhaka 1207.

Phone: 9132093-94, Advertising: 9132155, Circulation: 9132282, Fax: News-9132192, e-mail: news@dhakatribune.com, info@dhakatribune.com, Website: www.dhakatribune.com

B3 Online grocers come up trumps in India’s e-commerce boom

B4 OPEC heading for no

output cut despite oil price plunge

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2014 www.dhakatribune.com/business

Bangladesh needs 10 more years beyond 2021 to become middle-income country

UNCTAD report frustrates vision as the country lags behind economic vulnerability and human assets index Becoming a middle income country n Tribune Report also does not mean graduating from Bangladesh would have to wait 10 more years than expected to graduate from the league of least developed countries (LDCs), as the country still lags behind economic vulnerability and human assets index despite faring well in some socio-economic indicators.

The latest developments indicated Bangladesh to fail exiting from LDCs club by 2021 as predicted earlier.

The observation emerged with the release of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)’s Least Developed Countries Report 2014 at the CIRDAP auditorium in Dhaka yesterday.

Center for Policy Dialogue (CPD) arranged a press conference to launch the report subtitled “Growth with Structural Transformation: A Post-2015 Development Agenda.”

Since 1971, only four LDCs – Botswana, Cape Verde, the Maldives and Samoa – advanced to the group of developing countries, with Equatorial Guinea and Vanuatu expected to join them in June and December respectively in 2017, and the potential candidates are Angola and Kiribati.

Bangladesh got its LDC membership in 1973 and for the last three decades it has been enjoying all the benefits of the group. The number of LDC countries is now 48.

“Despite good progress in some socio-economic indicators, Bangladesh still needs to wait 10 years more to get out of LDCs status,” CPD distinguished fellow Debapriya Bhattacharya told the press conference.

He said the country needs to work more vigorously in reducing the risk of economic vulnerability and enhance human assets along with lifting per capita income to rise above the status of a LDC.

Center for Policy Dialogue releases the report on “Growth with Structural Transformation: A Post-2015 Developmnet agenda at a press conference held in CIRDAP auditorium in the capital yesterday MAHMUD HOSSAIN OPU “The LDCs excelled in economic growth during the last decades, quality of livelihood did not significantly improve which, in turn, undermined progress towards achieving the MDG targets,” he said.

To graduate, Bangladesh needs to have per capita income of $1,242 in 2015. Recently, the government put the per capita income figure at $1,044.

The country scored 32.4 points in the Economic Vulnerability Index.

LDCs which plan to graduate from the group must bring down their scores below 32. As for the Human Assets Index,

the country will have to add over 11 more points to its current score of 54.7, according to the report.

The list of LDCs is reviewed every three years by the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, based on recommendations by the committee for development policy.

A country will qualify for graduation from LDCs if it has met the graduation threshold of at least two of the three criteria – per capita income, human asset and economic vulnerability – during the period covered by at least two consecutive triennial reviews of the list.

Explaining the LDCs’ drawbacks, Bhattacharya said Bangladesh’s development amongst the LDCs is remarkable due to improved growth, remittance influx, enhanced food security and resilience to environmental disaster etc.

“But the country lags behind in primary areas such as income and employment generation, diversification of existing exportable items, low per capita income due to large population etc.”

He said, as a result, Bangladesh cannot go beyond the wage-low productivity-low income cycle.

BB imposes ban BGMEA election panels select leaders on multiple n Ibrahim Hossain Ovi mobile accounts n Tribune Report

A client will not be allowed to open more than one account under one bank or subsidiaries that provide mobile financial services.

Bangladesh Bank imposed the restriction to remove forgery committed through mobile financial services and to ensure proper use of the services, said a circular the authority issued yesterday.

According to the circular, the clients who already have multiple mobile accounts with a mobile financial service provider must stop the accounts immediately by keeping active only one.

Bangladesh Bank found allegation that agents had been making transaction on behalf of unregistered clients by opening multiple accounts in their names.

Such activities go against the guideline on mobile financial services for the banks and promote different kinds of crimes.

Earlier, the central bank fixed limit on daily and monthly transactions on the accounts but did not restrict the number of accounts, said the circular. l

To contest BGMEA election due in March next year, two panels- Shammilito Parishad and Forum- have selected their leaders.

Shammilito Parishad nominated Siddiqur Rahman and Forum picked Mahmud Hasan Khan Babu as panel leaders to vie for the election of the association for next two years.

In separate meetings recently, they selected two candidates to lead the panels in the upcoming biannual election of Bangladesh Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association.

“We have taken Mahmud Hasan Khan Babu as our Forum leader,” said Anwarul Alam Chowdhury Parvez who was also president of BGMEA. When contacted, Suiddiqur Rahman said: “Yes, I will contest from Shammilito Parishad as a panel leader.”

There are more than 3,000 voters, said BGMEA. The election will pick a total of 35 directors through direct voting by the BGMEA members. Of them, 26 will be from Dhaka zone and the rest from

the LDCs group because it requires improving on social indicators, which many LDCs failed to achieve despite generating high income and growth through exporting natural resources and tourism promotion, said the CPD distinguished fellow.

In this context, CPD Executive Director Professor Mustafizur Rahman said Bangladesh cannot meet the post2015 goals without addressing human and economic development altogether because development in the 21st century is not linear, there are qualitative changes in the age of globalisation.

CPD Research Fellow Towfiqul Islam Khan presented the report.

For smooth transition for graduating from the list of LDCs, the UNCTAD report recommended for putting more emphasis in generating income and employment, structural transformation through increased industrial productivity and good governance in order to reduce economic vulnerability that persistently hold back LDCs including Bangladesh from generating enough momentum to graduate.

It also recommended LDCs to prioritise resource mobilisation for public and private investment, industrial and sectoral policies to channel resources into most productive sectors and activities and macroeconomic policies which foster economic growth.

The LDC report found the reasons for the LDC Paradox and said failures to graduate from LDCs partly reflected an external problem that is limited progress on MDG 8 (a global partnership for development), falling far short of development partners’ aid commitments and serious erosion of LDCs’ trade preferences relative to other developing countries. l

Chittagong zone.

As per the election guideline, the elected directors will select president and four vice-presidents.

Of four vice-presidents, three will be elected from Dhaka zone and one from Chittagong zone.

Parishad leader Siddiqur Rahman is

a former vice president of BGMEA and chairman of Sterling Group.

Forum leader Mahmud Hasan Khan Babu is a director of BGMEA and managing director of Rising Fashions Ltd. The tenure of the current BGMEA board, led by Atiqul Islam, will expire by the end of this year. l

n Muhammad Zahidul Islam While Grameenphone received a lacklustre response to its Mozilla smartphones, Banglalink has brought handsets with same operating system.

Banglalink launched the sets on Wednesday with handset vendor Alcatel offering the price Tk3,299 each.

But Grameenphone apparently failed in its marketing campaign of handsets equipped with Firefox OS, said the market insiders. According to them, it was due to the price (Tk4,650) which is higher compared to the services offered.

Since the launch in late September, about 8,000 sets were sold though 23,000 sets were imported in a joint venture with handset vendor Symphony, said a senior official of Grameenphone.

“The handsets were designed according to the taste and demand of the youth. But the response was only 8,000,” Grameenphone CEO Vivek Sood told the Dhaka Tribune recently.

The 3G-enabled handsets have been marketed with Symphony brand and the price was set at about Tk4,650. A lot of money was spent for marketing purpose of the sets offering bundles of facility and service, officials said.

But many buyers were not happy with the price compared to the volume of service as they said the price was a major factor for poor response, but the services were not that much.

There was also a price difference between Bangladesh and other markets. While Mozilla launched handsets internationally at a price of $25 each (around Tk2,000) and about $33 in India, its Bangladesh price is $60.

Market sources said this price gap with other markets was also another reason for failure to draw expected customer response in Bangladesh.

The sets feature a 3.5-inch display, 1GHz processor and 1 megapixel camera. l

October imports rise 11% due to increased demand for capital machinery n Tribune Report

BGMEA members will elect executive committee to lead the $24.49bn industry

GP’s Mozilla sets get poor response

The country’s import expenditure rose by 11% in October compared to the same month last year due to increase in capital machinery import.

The total LC (letter of credit) settlement value stood at $3.15bn last month which was $2.8bn in the same month last year, according to the Bangladesh Bank data released yesterday.

Though the import increased yearon-year basis, it dropped by 6.4% compared to $3.26bn in the previous month.

The LC value of capital machinery stood at $154m in October in comparison with $147m in September.

Capital machinery import experienced 32% fall in September compared to $215.72m in August.

The growth of capital machinery import rose by 66% to $217m in August from $130m in the previous month.

According to the central bank data, LC value against rice import stood at 39.23m in September followed by wheat $66.60m, sugar $34.83m, edible oil (crude) $62.72m and pulses $34.43m.

The total LC opening value rose by 9% to $3bn in October compared to $2.7bn in the same period of the last year The total LC opening value rose by 9% to $3bn in October compared to $2.7bn in the same period of the last year.

The cumulative LC settlement value rose by 11% to $13bn in first four months of current fiscal year 2014-15 compared to $11.67bn in the same period of the last fiscal year. l

Taka weakens after remaining stable for 3 months n Tribune Report The US dollar is slowly getting stronger against the local currency Taka due to the increasing trend in imports that took an upward trend in last few months.

The exchange rate of dollar rose to an average of Tk77.68 as of yesterday from Tk77.40 in the beginning of this month. The rate, however, remained stable at Tk77.40 a dollar during the last three months period due to the sluggish import growth.

In an attempt to retain the dollar rate, Bangladesh Bank had bought more than US$5bn in last year.

“Dollar rate is gaining mostly because of the ongoing increasing trend in imports,” said Kazi Sayedur Rahman, general manager of Foreign Exchange Reserve and

Treasury Management Department of Bangladesh Bank.

He also blamed the importers for creating panic, which also contributed to the rise of exchange rate as they are buying more dollars unnecessary, just fearing further hike.

He, however, assured that there would be no dollar crisis as the central bank has adequate foreign currency reserve.

Foreign loan inflow, which had earlier made the dollar available in the market, has witnessed insignificant inflow in the current month.

Moreover, deferred payment of LC (letter of credit) might also be increased, which could be blamed for depreciation of local currency, he said.

Kazi Sayedur Rahman, who termed the process to retain the

A man counting notes on a bank counter exchange rate by buying dollar was abnormal, said: “Rather, the market is now behaving normally with

RAJIB DHAR

fluctuation in the exchange rate but Bangladesh Bank kept the rate stable artificially by buying dollars

and that behavior was abnormal.”

The import was 11.61% negative in July this year compared to same months in the previous year.

The growth turned to positive from August with 43.70% rise in import compared to the same months of the last year and continued to increase till now, according to the Bangladesh Bank data.

BB data shows that the LC settlement value was lower than the opening value in July. But in the recent months, LC settlement value turned to higher than that of opening value.

The import expenditure value basis on LC settlement was $2.8bn while LC opening value was $3.4bn in July this year. The LC settlement value stood at $3.3bn in August while LC opening value at $3.2bn. l

B2

Stock

DHAKA TRIBUNE

DSE turnover falls below Tk300 crore

DSE key features November 27, 2014

Traded Issues

302

n Tribune Report

Issue Gain (Avg. Price Basis)

117

Issue Loss (Avg. Price Basis)

175

Turnover (Million Taka)

Stocks closed flat amid choppy trading yesterday with turnover falling below Tk300-crore after 18 weeks.

The market moved between gains and losses through entire session, as investors remained cautious over the prolonged market volatility. The intra-day volatility was more than 37 points.

The benchmark DSEX gained 16 points or 0.4% to close at 4,772, after losses in the previous session.

Market ended the day with positive note amid benchmark index gaining However, the Shariah index DSES was marginally down almost 2 points or 0.2% to 1,106. The comprising blue chips DS30 settled at 1,760, edging 9 points or 0.6% higher.

Chittagong Stock Exchange (CSE) Selective Categories Index, CSCX, was marginally up 4 points to end at 8,952.

Trading activities remained poor as turnover at DSE stood at Tk263crore, sharply 15.6% lower over previous session and lowest since July 20 this year.

Food and allied sector registered the highest gain of 3.6%, driven by heavy weight BATBC that rose 4.8%.

Weekly capital market highlights DSE Broad Index : DSE - 30 Index : CSE All Share Index: CSE - 30 Index : CSE Selected Index : DSE LOSER Company

Closing (% Change)

Khan Brothers-N Progressive Life-A Sonali Ansh -A Popular Life Insu. -A GeminiSeaFood-Z Continental Insur. -A Pharma Aids A MJL BD Ltd.-A Eastern Lubricants -A PragatiLife Insu. -Z

-6.35 -6.05 -5.99 -5.06 -4.28 -3.92 -3.75 -3.32 -2.98 -2.85

CSE LOSER Company

Closing (% Change)

Samata LeatheR -Z Wata Chemicals -A Ambee Pharma -A Khan Brothers-N BATBCL -A Hwa Well Textiles-N National Polymer -A AMCL 2nd MF-A 1st Janata Bank MF-A Al Arafa Islami B-A

-7.11 -6.25 -6.07 -5.39 -4.98 -4.79 -4.29 -4.26 -3.77 -3.31

4772.55574

(+) 0.34%

1760.89915

(+) 0.50%

14657.55000

(-) 0.00%

12093.76010

(+) 0.12%

8952.62800

(+) 0.04%

Average (% Change) -6.79 -6.16 -4.43 -3.28 -2.57 -2.06 -2.93 -2.75 -3.39 -2.59 Average (% Change) -7.11 -7.83 -7.55 -6.48 -4.98 -4.52 -7.73 -4.26 -2.67 -2.38

ANALYST

ClosingAvg. 49.95 90.00 155.26 150.88 209.87 20.01 241.92 120.88 380.00 92.43

ClosingAvg. 18.30 223.97 257.66 50.11 2,527.60 37.84 65.15 4.50 5.11 14.75

Closing

Bank NBFI Investment Engineering Food & Allied Fuel & Power Jute Textile Pharma & Chemical Paper & Packaging Service Leather Ceramic Cement Information Technology General Insurance Life Insurance Telecom Travel & Leisure Miscellaneous Debenture

DSE Million Taka 307.73 161.12 27.77 326.21 58.01 360.99 7.94 181.52 517.04 18.96 138.81 13.20 17.32 85.00 18.62 19.46 40.60 73.47 45.60 218.59 0.02

DHIGH

48.70 90.00 152.30 148.10 205.60 19.60 236.30 119.50 381.00 92.20

Closing 18.30 225.00 263.00 49.10 2,527.60 37.80 67.00 4.50 5.10 14.60

53.20 90.00 165.00 156.00 216.80 21.00 254.00 125.50 399.00 95.00

DHIGH 18.30 225.00 263.00 53.10 2,527.60 37.90 67.80 4.50 5.20 15.00

66,862

Unchanged Issue (Avg. Price Basis)

10

Market Capital Equity (Billion. Tk.)

2,522.36

Market Capital Equity (Billion US$)

30.57

CSE key features November 27, 2014 Turnover (Million Taka)

227.75

Turnover (Volume)

6,762,777

Number of Contract

9,511

Traded Issues

211

Issue Gain (Avg. Price Basis)

84

Issue Loss (Avg. Price Basis)

121

Unchanged Issue (Avg. Price Basis)

5

Market Capital Equity (Billion. Tk.)

2,419.83

Market Capital Equity (Billion US$)

29.33

Turnover in Million

DLOW 48.30 90.00 147.00 148.00 203.00 19.50 235.00 113.00 372.10 92.20

18.30 222.00 256.00 48.50 2,527.60 37.80 64.00 4.50 5.00 14.50

Latest EPS

82.338 0.045 7.934 5.507 0.787 1.936 32.308 54.358 0.114 1.063

Turnover in Million

DLOW

0.009 0.134 0.193 16.134 0.126 0.095 0.586 0.002 0.041 0.832

% change 11.67 6.11 1.05 12.37 2.20 13.68 0.30 6.88 19.60 5.26 0.50 0.66 3.22 0.71 0.74 1.54 2.79 1.73 8.29 0.00

Million Taka 21.31 7.78 2.89 36.91 3.27 25.10 17.18 31.70 2.24 15.61 0.77 1.77 7.77 2.46 0.70 1.30 4.81 9.57 34.87 0.00

CSE

% change 9.34 3.41 1.27 16.19 1.43 11.01 0.00 7.53 13.90 0.98 6.85 0.34 0.78 3.41 1.08 0.31 0.57 2.11 4.20 15.29 0.00

Million Taka 329.04 168.90 30.66 363.12 61.28 386.09 7.94 198.70 548.74 21.20 154.42 13.97 19.09 92.77 21.08 20.17 41.90 78.28 55.18 253.45 0.02

Kohinoor Chem -A SummitAlliancePort.-A ACI Formulations-A Delta Brac HFCL-A Takaful Islami Insu-A ACI Limited- A BATBCL -A Provati Insur.-A UNITED AIR-A Keya Cosmetics -A

Closing (% Change) 7.45 6.47 6.37 6.19 5.73 4.98 4.78 4.66 4.55 4.30

CSE GAINER

1.36 2.30 0.76 4.13 1.39 2.27 9.88 5.11 2.08 2.38

Latest EPS 0.05 5.37 4.68 1.36 94.59 3.52 2.76 0.72 1.04 1.35

Latest PE 36.7 39.1 204.3 36.5 151.0 8.8 24.5 23.7 182.7 38.8

Company Prime Insur -A SummitAlliancePort.-A Sonargaon Tex -Z ACI Formulations-A Hakkani P& Paper -B Grameen M F One-A City G Insu.-A ACI Limited- A IFIL Islamic M.F.1-A Delta Brac HFCL-A

7.50 7.44 6.38 5.50 5.24 4.78 4.40 4.25 3.70 3.65

Average (% Change) 7.50 6.08 6.38 2.52 3.44 3.61 3.90 3.70 2.78 3.60

ClosingAvg.

Closing

350.49 68.17 123.01 70.86 27.64 380.35 2,701.70 20.24 9.09 28.75

351.80 69.10 125.20 70.30 27.70 385.50 2,708.60 20.20 9.20 29.10

ClosingAvg.

Closing

21.50 68.02 10.00 123.05 30.10 23.83 18.91 384.78 5.55 71.00

21.50 69.30 10.00 124.70 30.10 24.10 19.00 382.60 5.60 71.00

DHIGH 356.00 69.70 126.40 72.50 28.50 388.50 2,714.20 20.60 9.30 29.50

DHIGH 21.50 69.50 10.00 128.00 30.40 24.10 19.00 398.00 5.60 71.00

DLOW 325.00 60.00 115.00 66.00 25.00 360.00 2,580.00 19.50 8.00 25.90

DLOW 21.50 65.50 10.00 120.80 29.90 23.40 18.80 367.00 5.40 71.00

Turnover in Million 0.933 90.669 29.948 12.821 0.770 55.351 13.919 0.320 23.032 119.147

Turnover in Million 0.005 10.708 0.005 1.784 0.090 0.036 0.028 2.797 0.042 0.107

Latest EPS 10.40 0.88 3.27 5.36 1.43 9.65 94.59 1.97 1.16 1.93

Latest EPS 1.81 0.88 -0.84 3.27 0.64 3.40 1.89 9.65 1.52 5.36

Latest PE 33.7 77.5 37.6 13.2 19.3 39.4 28.6 10.3 7.8 14.9

Latest PE 11.9 77.3 -ve 37.6 47.0 7.0 10.0 39.9 3.7 13.2

News, analysis and recent disclosures FUWANGCER: Credit Rating Agency of Bangladesh Limited (CRAB) has informed that the rating of Fu-Wang Ceramic Industry Ltd. as ''BBB2'' in the long term and ''ST3'' in the short term on 16 November 2014 based on audited financial statements up to 30 June 2014, bank liability position as on 16 November 2014 and other relevant quantitative as well as qualitative information up to the date of rating declaration.

IPO Subscription: C & A Textiles Limited subscription date 09 to 13 November 2014, NRB upto 22 November 2014. @ taka 10, face value taka 10 and market lot 500. IFAD Autos Limited subscription date 23 to 27 November 2014, NRB upto 06 December 2014. @ taka 30, face value taka 10 and market lot 200.

Right Share: ICB: Subscription period for rights issue will be from 07.12.2014 to 30.12.2014. Record date for entitlement of rights share: 09.09.2014. BIFC: subscription period for rights issue of the Company will be from 09.11.2014 to 30.11.2014. Record Date for entitlement of rights share: 19.10.2014. FIRSTSBANK Subscription period for rights issue will be from 07.12.2014 to 28.12.2014. Record date for entitlement of rights share: 20.11.2014.

Dividend/AGM BATASHOE: 175% interim cash dividend,

Record Date for entitlement of interim dividend: 04.12.2014.

ICB: 45% cash, AGM: 20.12.2014, Record Date: 03.12.2014.

BATBC: 100% interim cash dividend, Record date for entitlement of interim dividend: 03.12.2014.

BENGALWTL: 23% cash, AGM: 28.12.2014, Record Date: 02.12.2014.

MPETROLEUM: 95% cash and 10% stock, AGM: 16.01.2015, Record date: 04.12.2014.

ENVOYTEX: 12% cash and 3% stock dividend, AGM: 24.12.2014, Record date: 02.12.2014.

AFTABAUTO: 17% cash, AGM: 24.12.2014, Record date: 30.11.2014.

JAMUNAOIL: 90% cash and 10% stock, AGM: 07.02.2015, Record date: 11.12.2014.

GEMINISEA: 7.50% cash, AGM: 22.12.2014, Record Date: 08.12.2014.

KBPPWBIL: 10% stock, AGM: 29.12.2014, Record Date: 08.12.2014.

RAHIMAFOOD: No dividend, AGM: 24.12.2014, Record Date: 04.12.2014.

DACCADYE: 10% stock dividend, AGM: 12.12.2014, Record date: 25.11.2014.

ORIONINFU: 15% cash dividend, AGM: 18.12.2014, Record date: 25.11.2014.

KOHINOOR: 25% stock dividend, AGM: 18.12.2014, Record date: 25.11.2014.

PHARMAID: 25% cash, AGM: 28.12.2014,

Record Date: 02.12.2014.

TALLUSPIN: No dividend, AGM: 23.12.2014, Record Date: 01.12.2014.

MITHUNKNIT: 20% stock, AGM: 23.12.2014, Record date: 20.11.2014.

WMSHIPYARD: 5% cash dividend to the general shareholders only, and 10% stock dividend to all the shareholders, AGM: 21.12.2014, Record date: 20.11.2014.

PRIMELIFE: 10% cash and 15% stock dividend, AGM: 24.12.2014, Record Date: 20.11.2014.

OLYMPIC: 20% cash and 35% stock, AGM: 24.12.2014, Record Date: 27.11.2014.

PADMAOIL: 100% cash, AGM: 14.02.2015, Record date: 22.12.2014.

EASTRNLUB: 30% cash, AGM: 17.01.2015, Record Date: 25.11.2014.

ATLASBANG: 35% cash, AGM: 24.12.2014, Record date: 27.11.2014.

SAMORITA: 20% cash and 10% stock dividend, AGM: 07.01.2015, Record Date: 19.11.2014.

NPOLYMAR: 18% stock, AGM: 18.12.2014, Record Date: 19.11.2014.

DULAMIACOT: No dividend, AGM: 24.12.2014, Record Date: 27.11.2014.

POWERGRID: 10% cash, AGM: 17.01.2015, Record Date: 25.11.2014.

SPCL: 25% cash and 5% stock dividend, AGM: 29.01.2015, Record Date: 27.11.2014.

366.0 41.7 55.1 36.8 26.7 10.8 23.6 6.3 4.9 10.9

DSE TURNOVER LEADERS Company

Total

Closing (% Change)

Average (% Change) 7.05 5.92 2.50 7.07 5.50 2.31 6.02 4.60 2.02 2.46

Latest PE

Combined with heightened volatility and low turnover, closing session of the week ended flat

SECTORAL TURNOVER SUMMARY Sector

▲ ▲ ▼ ▲ ▲

Company

65,619,204

Number of Contract

Service and real Estate also gained 4.8%. Banks, pharmaceuticals and telecommunication edged up while non-banking financial institutions closed marginally lower.

Gainers beat losers, as out of 302 issues traded, 162 advanced, 105 declined and 35 remained unchanged.

Lanka Bangla Securities said market ended the day with positive note amid benchmark index gaining.

But turnover activity indicated that investors were still remaining cautious and observing market movement from the sidelines, it said.

It said activities decreased in the DSE where turnover, trade, and volume were down by 15.64%, 10.45%, and 12.16% respectively.

IDLC Investments said combined with heightened volatility and low turnover, closing session of the week ended flat.

Keya Cosmetics topped turnover leader list with shares worth Tk12 crore changing hands, followed by Beximco Ltd, Square Pharmaceuticals, Western Marine Shipyard, Summit Alliance Port Limited, Khan Brothers PP Woven and United Commercial Bank.

Eastern Lubricants gained highest of over 7%. Other top gainers include ACI Formulation, ACI Limited, Summit Alliance Port Ltd, BATBC and Provati Insurance.

Khan Brothers PP Woven was the biggest loser falling more than 6%, followed by Progressive Life Insurance, Sonali Aansh, Popular Life Insurance, Gemini Sea Food, Continental Insurance and Pharma Aid. l

DSE GAINER

2,637.97

Turnover (Volume)

Friday, November 28, 2014

% change 11.48 5.89 1.07 12.67 2.14 13.47 0.28 6.93 19.15 0.74 5.39 0.49 0.67 3.24 0.74 0.70 1.46 2.73 1.93 8.84 0.00

Prepared exclusively for Dhaka Tribune by Business Information Automation Service Line (BIASL), on the basis of information collected from daily stock quotations and audited reports of the listed companies. High level of caution has been taken to collect and present the above information and data. The publisher will not take any responsibility if any body uses this information and data for his/her investment decision. For any query please email to biasl@bol-online.com or call 01552153562 or go to www.biasl.net

Keya Cosmetics -A BEXIMCO Ltd. -A Square Pharma -A WesternMarine -N SummitAlliancePort.-A Khan Brothers-N UCBL - A Beximco Pharma -A Jamuna Oil -A Grameenphone-A

ACI Limited- A MJL BD Ltd.-A AB Bank - A LafargeS Cement-Z GSP Finance-A

CSE TURNOVER LEADERS Company BEXIMCO Ltd. -A Khan Brothers-N WesternMarine -N SummitAlliancePort.-A UCBL - A Jamuna Oil -A Keya Cosmetics -A UNITED AIR-A LafargeS Cement-Z Square Pharma -A

FAR Chemical-N SAIF Powertec-N Appollo Ispat CL -N Summit Power -A Beximco Pharma -A

VolumeShares 4,144,274 2,849,355 372,210 1,603,800 1,330,035 1,648,500 2,737,218 1,235,468 297,893 211,637

Value in Million 119.15 113.52 93.65 92.82 90.67 82.34 79.67 76.96 74.14 66.32

% of TotalTurnover 4.52 4.30 3.55 3.52 3.44 3.12 3.02 2.92 2.81 2.51

VolumeShares

Value in Million

% of TotalTurnover

145,525 449,674 1,741,477 453,500 1,427,645

423,429 322,000 253,700 157,413 274,234 28,376 236,364 707,138 51,500 21,246

54,200 62,800 187,400 90,617 55,120

55.35 54.36 51.32 49.95 43.56

16.84 16.13 14.66 10.71 7.93 6.98 6.80 6.45 5.66 5.34

4.91 4.47 3.94 3.50 3.42

2.10 2.06 1.95 1.89 1.65

7.39 7.09 6.44 4.70 3.48 3.07 2.99 2.83 2.49 2.35

2.16 1.96 1.73 1.54 1.50

ClosingP 29.10 39.90 250.90 58.10 69.10 48.70 29.20 61.90 249.30 313.00

385.50 119.50 29.70 109.50 30.60 ClosingP

39.90 49.10 58.00 69.30 29.00 249.50 29.00 9.20 109.70 251.30

31.40 71.70 20.90 38.40 61.80

Change % 4.30 3.10 -0.67 1.57 6.47 -6.35 1.74 1.14 0.97 0.03

4.98 -3.32 2.41 -0.90 1.66

Change %

2.84 -5.39 0.87 7.44 2.11 0.73 3.20 3.37 -0.81 -0.67

-2.48 1.56 -0.48 -1.29 0.82

ClosingY 27.90 38.70 252.60 57.20 64.90 52.00 28.70 61.20 246.90 312.90

367.20 123.60 29.00 110.50 30.10

ClosingY

38.80 51.90 57.50 64.50 28.40 247.70 28.10 8.90 110.60 253.00

32.20 70.60 21.00 38.90 61.30

DHIGH 29.50 40.20 254.00 59.20 69.70 53.20 29.60 63.30 251.90 316.90

388.50 125.50 30.00 113.50 31.30 DHIGH

40.10 53.10 59.20 69.50 29.30 251.00 29.30 9.30 111.10 253.50

32.40 72.90 21.60 40.50 63.00

DLOW 25.90 35.00 231.00 56.50 60.00 48.30 26.00 56.00 235.00 310.00

360.00 113.00 26.10 108.70 28.00 DLOW

39.00 48.50 56.40 65.50 26.00 240.00 28.10 8.80 108.00 250.40

31.30 69.60 20.80 38.00 61.50

AvgPrice 28.75 39.84 251.59 57.88 68.17 49.95 29.10 62.29 248.88 313.35

380.35 120.88 29.47 110.14 30.51 AvgPrice

39.77 50.11 57.77 68.02 28.92 246.00 28.79 9.12 109.97 251.37

31.83 71.22 21.05 38.64 62.09

DHAKA TRIBUNE

Business

Online grocers come up trumps in India’s e-commerce boom n Reuters, Mumbai

Put off by snarled city traffic and a shortage of parking, more Indians are shopping for groceries online, helping e-tailers like Bigbasket.com and Localbanya.com turn in profits while supermarkets are struggling.

The online grocers benefit from low overheads, as they store goods in warehouses outside big cities where commercial rents are sky-high. Some like Bigbasket.com can also charge more for certain items than traditional supermarkets, which means even more profits in a country where all food retailers enjoy margins as high as 20% on rice and other staples.

Bigbasket.com director Ganesh Krishnan said the company would turn a profit this year, just three years after it was set up. By contrast, analysts say supermarkets like More, owned by the Aditya Birla Group, and Reliance Industries Ltd’s Reliance Fresh are struggling to attract enough customers to make a profit as they compete with the small neighbourhood stores where most people buy food. Both conglomerates declined to give figures for their supermarket operations.

“You can go shop at a Walmart or Tesco in the US and UK and they have parking. You can take the shopping carts right up to your car, so it’s smooth,” Krishnan told Reuters. “In India, none of this exists.”

Densely populated cities have proved attractive for web grocers in Asia. Analysts estimate online sales of fresh produce in China could quadruple to 40 billion yuan ($6.5bn) in five years from about 11.5bn yuan in 2013.

Overall, e-commerce is rapidly growing in India, fuelled by an expand-

B3

Friday, November 28, 2014

Oil extends losses ahead of key OPEC meeting n AFP, Singapore

An employee carries goods at a Big Basket warehouse on the outskirts of Mumbai ing middle class and better web access, and the potential for online grocers in particular is huge.

Most food shopping in India is done in cramped groceries that offer limited variety. Urbanites also frequent supermarkets, but e-grocers are becoming more popular as more shoppers are willing to pay extra for the convenience of not dealing with traffic and parking problems.

Sales of food and groceries currently account for more than two-thirds of all retail sales, consultants Technopak say, and the value of these sales is expected

to nearly double to $686bn by 2020.

Investors are taking note. In September, Helion Ventures and Zodius Capital led a funding round that raised 2bn rupees ($32.6m) for Bigbasket.com. Rival Localbanya is also looking to raise a similar amount to expand nationwide, its co-founder Amit Bhartiya said.

By running their own delivery networks, and warehousing outside the city, e-grocers are better able to control costs: analysts say the operating costs of traditional supermarkets are higher when you factor in rent and utility bills, for example.

REUTERS

Bigbasket.com, which started out in December 2011, currently has about 220,000 active customers Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad. It plans to launch in Pune, Delhi and Chennai in the next three months, highlighting just how quickly online grocers can grow compared to traditional supermarket chains.

“Where brick and mortar grocery in India fails to muster scale, online can do it very, very quickly just by the sheer opportunity of reaching a number of people with much less investment,” said Harminder Sahni, managing director of consultants Wazir Advisors. l

Oil prices retreated further in Asia yesterday on expectations the OPEC cartel will keep production at present levels despite pressure over falling prices at a key meeting later in the day, analysts said.

US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for January delivery fell 89 cents to $72.80 while Brent crude for January was down $1.19 to $76.56 in afternoon trade.

WTI fell 40 cents in New York late Wednesday to its lowest closing point since September 2010. Brent eased 58 cents in London.

The 12-nation Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries will hold one of its toughest and most significant meetings in recent years in Vienna later Thursday, with members under pressure to address falling prices, which have sunk 30 percent since June.

“All eyes are squarely on OPEC now.

We suspect they will decide to keep to their current 30 million barrel-a-day production level,” David Lennox, resource analyst at Fat Prophets in Sydney, told AFP. “They could make some token, insignificant cuts in production ... OPEC has been inclined to surprises before,” he added.

Sanjeev Gupta, head of the AsiaPacific oil and gas practice at business consultancy firm EY, said “in the absence of an announcement of a major cut ... crude oil prices will continue to remain soft till the end of this year”.

Traders have been digesting a plethora of statements from petroleum ministers ahead of the OPEC meeting.

Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi was

quoted saying he expects the oil market to “stabilise itself eventually,” a remark Dow Jones Newswires said suggested he did not see the need for major cuts.

Iran’s oil minister, Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, said his position was similar to Naimi’s, even as he expressed concerns about a glut.

'OPEC still controls a large chunk as a whole but as with any cartel, the test will be when prices are falling and members have to make sacrifices' “All the experts in the markets believe that we have an oversupply on the market and next year we will have more oversupply,” Zanganeh said.

OPEC’s poorer members, led by Venezuela and Ecuador, earlier have called publicly for a cut in output.

But the cartel’s Gulf members, led by kingpin Saudi Arabia, are rejecting such calls unless they are guaranteed market share in the highly competitive arena.

OPEC is currently pumping closer to 31 million barrels a day, or around 43% of global production, according to analysts.

“OPEC still controls a large chunk as a whole but as with any cartel, the test will be when prices are falling and members have to make sacrifices,” said Singapore’s United Overseas Bank. l

Amazon cuts Fire phone Euro slips in Asia on ECB official’s price to ignite sales easing comments n AFP, San Francisco

Unilever CEO Polman visits Bangladesh n Tribune Business Desk Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever Plc visited Bangladesh from November 26th to 27th as part of his regular visit to key Unilever markets across the world.

He was accompanied by Sanjiv Mehta, Executive Vice President-South Asia Cluster, Unilever. Kamran Bakr, Chairman and Managing Director of Unilever Bangladesh and the Management Committee of Unilever Bangladesh had detailed engagements with Polman on the business strategy and the growth opportunity for Unilever in Bangladesh. This is Paul Polman’s second visit to Bangladesh.

Unilever Bangladesh is a business that Unilever is proud of. It has consistently delivered double digit growth over the years and is also one of the top tax payers in the country. During his visit, Polman addressed employees of Unilever Bangladesh and gave an overview of Unilever’s Strategy and the positive contribution being made by markets like Bangladesh to the global business growth.

He also met with various stakeholder representatives including industry leaders, development partners, government officials and prominent personalities of the country.

Commenting on his visit Polman said, “I am very happy to have the opportunity to visit Bangladesh for the second time. It has been a very energizing and inspiring visit.”

He also said that he was pleased with the manner in which Unilever Bangladesh has been able to deliver on the commitments of Unilever Sustainable Living Plan and the fact that the company brands were at the forefront of making a positive impact to the lives of millions of people in Bangladesh.

He added, “In order to realise sustainable growth, we are integrating sustainability into our strategy, brands and innovation. This means sustainable, equitable growth is the only acceptable model for our business. We believe growth and sustainability are not in conflict. In fact, in our experience sustainability drives growth." l

Amazon on Wednesday slashed the price of Fire mobile phones that stalled after launch early this year, becoming a drag on the US online retail titan’s bottom line.

The price cut, which Amazon said would last until December 1, was the second for Fire and was included in a set of holiday-shopping season deals announced for items including Kindle e-readers.

Fire smartphones free of accompanying contracts with telecom carriers are available for $199 and come with a year-long membership to Amazon Prime subscription service which gives customers free shipping and access to music, videos and other online content.

Fire phones hit the market mid-year at a price of $649 each without contracts, or $200 with multi-year telecom service deals.

Unlocked Fire phones are compatible with GSM networks provided by US carriers such as AT&T, T-Mobile, Metro

PCS and Cricket.

Seattle-based Amazon in September tried to ignite Fire sales by dropping the unlocked price to $449, and offering handsets for just 99 cents if bought along with a two-year service contract with telecom carrier AT&T. While some Amazon products and services have been popular, its smartphone market share has been “effectively zero,” according to the Consumer Intelligence Research Partners consultancy.

Amazon posted widening losses in the recently ended fiscal quarter, raising doubts on whether investors will support chief executive Jeff Bezos’ strategy of putting investment ahead of profit.

Amazon took a charge of $170m for inventory, mainly for unsold phones.

Some analysts believe that the US holiday season will test Amazon because traditional brick-and-mortar retailers are responding to the competition with offerings such as free shipping. l

n AFP, Tokyo The euro lost more ground in Asia yesterday after a European Central Bank official’s dovish comments boosted speculation about further easing measures, while lacklustre US data weighed on the dollar.

In Tokyo, the European common currency slipped to $1.2503 and 146.71 yen against $1.2506 and 147.22 yen in New York.

The dollar was lower at 117.29 yen, compared with 117.72 yen in US trading.

“Outside the US, the most significant development has been an elaboration

by ECB vice president (Vitor) Constancio of the likely timetable for a move to full-blown QE (quantitative easing) entailing sovereign bond purchases,” National Australia Bank said in a note.

The latest hint of possible ECB measures follows the US Federal Reserve winding up its own stimulus drive and eyeing a mid-2015 interest rate hike.

They also come less than a month after the Bank of Japan ramped up

its huge asset-buying scheme, which helped push the yen to multi-year lows.

ECB chief Mario Draghi has signalled his readiness to act quickly to deter deflation in the eurozone, sparking hopes for more stimulus.

“Market participants will be eager to hear what Draghi and (German central bank chief Jens) Weidmann have to say today following comments by Constancio... which were received as supportive of sovereign QE,” Credit Agricole said.

In the US, data for October showed a slight increase in US consumer spending, a rise in durable goods orders and a modest increase in new-home sales.

But the Labor Department reported higher jobless claims for the week ending November 22.

The figures came after better-thanexpected US growth data suggested that the world’s number one economy was on a healthy recovery track, while those in the eurozone and Japan struggle. l

Yellen’s ‘optimal’ model calls for rate hike this year, in theory n Reuters, Washington

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen has said the tenor of economic data will decide when the US central bank raises interest rates. Surprisingly, a data analysis based on Yellen’s own priorities points to a rate increase by the end of this year.

Yellen has cautioned that the economic models built for policymakers amount to mere guideposts in a complicated decision-making process.

But she also has placed special emphasis on a set of equations for what she dubbed in a November 2012 speech as “optimal policy” or “optimal control.” The equations mimic the churning of a vast economy and project a rate path that gives equal importance to meeting the Fed’s twin goals of maximum employment and stable prices.

Last Friday, Fed economists said in a note that they had updated the model, and the new version suggests the central bank should tighten policy enough to have the federal funds rate average 0.33% in the October-December period of this year.

The Fed has kept the rate, which governs overnight lending between banks, in a zero to 0.25% range since late-2008.

However, it’s clear the Fed is not following this model.

Several top officials have said they

US Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen attends a conference of central bankers hosted by the Bank of France in Paris are not likely to bump rates up until the middle of next year, and to meet the 0.33% average would require an extremely sharp hike at the Fed’s next and last meeting of the year on Dec 16-17.

Even the note’s authors are wary of policymakers leaning too heavily on their calculation because economic models by nature oversimplify a complex world. The assumptions that go

REUTERS

into them can easily prove to be wrong. “(Optimal control) paths should be treated with appropriate caution as a guide to actual policy,” Fed economists Flint Brayton, Thomas Laubach and

David Reifschneider wrote.

Yellen made waves in the 2012 speech by describing a computer simulation of optimal policy that suggested waiting to raise the fed funds rate until around the first half of 2016 to more quickly push down unemployment. Under this plan, inflation would be allowed to run above target for several years.

But as it turned out, the jobless rate came down more quickly than Yellen or most anyone else anticipated, while inflation has persisted well below the Fed’s 2% target.

That has puzzled economists as tightening labor markets are supposed to push prices higher. In a second note, another group of Fed economists said they had tweaked the Fed’s flagship economic model to make inflation less sensitive to changes in labor market slack.

Brayton, Laubach and Reifschneider re-ran Yellen’s 2012 computer simulation with minor changes and using the updated flagship model, which spit out an earlier liftoff for rates.

While they did not release a full methodology of the simulation, earlier this month the Fed responded to a Freedom of Information Act request from Reuters by releasing the computer programs Yellen used to calculate optimal policy in her 2012 speech, which was made when she was the Fed’s vice chair. l

B4

DHAKA TRIBUNE

Back Page

Friday, November 28, 2014

OPEC heading for no output cut despite oil price plunge n Reuters, Vienna OPEC Gulf oil producers will not be proposing an output cut later yesterday, reducing the likelihood of joint action by OPEC to prop up prices that have sunk by a third since June.

“The GCC reached a consensus,” Saudi Arabian Oil MinisterAli al-Naimi told reporters, referring to the Gulf Cooperation Council which includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. “We are very confident that OPEC will have a unified position.”

“The power of convincing will prevail tomorrow ... I am confident that OPEC is capable of taking a very unified position,” Naimi added.

A Gulf OPEC delegate told Reuters the GCC had reached a consensus not to cut oil output. Three OPEC delegates separately told Reuters they believed OPEC was unlikely to take any action when the 12-member organisation meets on Thursday after Russia said it would not cut output in tandem.

The OPEC meeting will be one of its most crucial in recent years, with oil having tumbled to below $78 a barrel due to the US shale boom and slower economic growth in China and Europe.

Cutting output unilaterally would effectively mean for OPEC, which accounts for a third of global oil output, a further loss of market share to North American shale oil producers.

If OPEC decided against cutting and rolled over existing output levels on Thursday, that would effectively mean a price war that the Saudis and other Gulf producers could withstand due to their large foreign-exchange reserves.

production ... I think everyone needs to play a role in balancing the market, not OPEC unilaterally,” he said.

Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zangeneh said some OPEC members, although not Iran, were now gearing up for a battle over market share.

“Some OPEC members believe that this is the time where we need to defend market share ... All the experts in the market believe we have oversupply in the market and next year we will have more oversupply,” he added.

The group could opt to roll over output levels but stress the importance of better compliance, while also agreeing to hold an extraordinary meeting if prices keep falling, a Gulf OPEC delegate and several OPEC watchers said.

Price war

Saudi Arabia's Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi talks to journalists before a meeting of OPEC oil ministers in Vienna Other members, such as Venezuela or Iran, would find it much more difficult.

Brent crude LCOc1 was trading down 73 cents at $77.60 a barrel at 1919 GMT. Naimi said earlier on Wednesday he expected the oil market “to stabi-

lise itself eventually”, after talks with non-OPEC member Russia on Tuesday yielded no pledge from Moscow to tackle a global oil glut jointly.

The UAE sided with Naimi, saying oil prices would soon stabilise, while ramping up pressure on non-OPEC na-

REUTERS

tions.

“This is not a crisis that requires us to panic ... we have seen (prices) way lower,” UAE Oil Minister Suhail bin Mohammed al-Mazroui told Reuters.

“The oversupply came from the evolution of the unconventional oil

China’s Alibaba plans to invest more in India n AFP, New Delhi E-commerce giant Alibaba’s founder Jack Ma promised Wednesday to invest more in India where online sales are soaring, predicting that the Internet will transform the country’s future.

Ma, on a whirlwind 48-hour trip with a nearly 100-member Chinese business delegation to India, has been scouting for investment opportunities to drive Alibaba’s revenues following its record $25bn initial public offer in September.

“We’ll invest more in India, work with Indian entrepreneurs, India technology companies,” the billionaire told a New Delhi business audience on his first visit to India since the IPO. Ma, who founded China’s biggest ecommerce company 15 years ago in his apartment with $60,000 collected from friends, divulged no figures for his Indi-

WTO postpones trade deal by a day after last-minute objection

n

Reuters, Geneva

The World Trade Organisation postponed adoption of the first global trade reform in its 19-year history on Wednesday, delaying by a day after a last-minute objection from Argentina, diplomats said.

“It’s not a big drama,” WTO chief spokesman Keith Rockwell told reporters. Diplomats said they expected the meeting to go ahead later yesterdayand the reform package to be adopted. But, after repeated pitfalls, nobody could rule out the deal tripping up.

The WTO has lurched from one disappointment to another over the past decade as it tries to find a balanced trade deal that all its members, now numbering 160, could support.

It cut back its ambitions to ensure unanimous backing for a small package of trade reforms at a meeting in Bali last December, but a new government in India refused to let the reforms go ahead.

That left the Bali deal in limbo, including its centrepiece, a global streamlining of customs processes that supporters say will add $1tn and 21 million jobs to the world economy.

Four months of stalemate ensued until a US negotiating breakthrough assuaged India’s concerns about the amount of attention being paid to its demand to be allowed to break the usual WTO rules by stockpiling crops at above-market prices.

Argentina has now demanded that the WTO meeting to agree on the Indian compromise should give equally formal backing to other parts of the Bali package of reforms, forcing diplomats to contact their ministries for approval for such a step.

“This gives a little bit more comfort to some delegations,” Rockwell said. “It’s just taking a little bit more time, it’s not anything to worry about too much. l

an investment plans. India’s e-commerce sales totalled $2bn last year - a puny sum compared with China’s $300bn.

But Indian sales are expected to hit around $15bn by 2016, according to analysts, thanks to an increasingly affluent middle class, rising Internet penetration and growing smartphone use.

Ma, regarded as an Internet visionary, hailed India’s new tech-savvy Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s commitment to making India a fully-connected business destination.

“As a businessman, I was inspired and moved,” he said.

“I was a teacher earlier and the Internet changed my life and I absolutely agree India can be changed by the Internet too.”

The 50-year-old executive chairman of Hangzhou-based Alibaba said India’s burgeoning youth population would

fuel the Internet’s growth, adding: “The Internet is a business of young people.”

There is huge scope for technological cooperation between India and China, and “a great opportunity for entrepreneurs” from the sometimes fractious neighbours, Ma said.

Speaking about broader strategy, Ma said of his company: “Over the next three years, one of the key strategies for Alibaba is to globalise... help more small businesses around the globe, use our services to do businesses.”

But he’s treading carefully, warning in the wake of Alibaba’s successful IPO: “People think we are too good - we can do anything. This is the most dangerous moment.”

Ma’s spokeswoman said he would participate “in a number of meetings with local businesses” in India, declining to give details.

Alibaba already has a small Indian market presence with a business-tobusiness sales start-up launched in 2010, while Indian merchants are the second biggest sellers on Alibaba after the Chinese.

Analysts expect Alibaba to expand in India’s e-commerce market, possibly teaming up with Snapdeal, which bills itself as India’s version of Alibaba.

Both Snapdeal and Alibaba allow online retailers to list wares from cooking oil to shoes and televisions.

Japan’s SoftBank, Alibaba’s largest shareholder with a one-third stake, last month became the biggest single investor in Snapdeal.

SoftBank pumped $627m into Snapdeal, which has enjoyed explosive growth - rising in just four years to become India’s biggest e-commerce marketplace with 25 million users. l

Merkel backs ‘in principle’ EU plan to revive economy n AFP, Berlin

Stephane Le Foll told reporters.

New EU Commission chief JeanClaude Juncker earlier Wednesday unveiled a 315bn euro ($390bn) investment plan to “kickstart” the economy, saying it would show the world that Europe was back in business.

The proposal must still be approved

by European leaders in December but would entail an investment fund and a scheme to match new projects with private money. German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said he was pleased about the EU investment proposal.

“We need more growth in Europe,” he told reporters, after talks with Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.

But he also stressed the need for some EU member states to undertake structural reforms and said money alone was not enough.

The new European Fund for Strategic Investment will be funded from

the EU’s budget and from the European Investment Bank, although the door is open for direct contributions from member states.

Merkel indicated that Germany would probably not be in a position to offer much financially.

Europe’s biggest economy is due to approve its draft 2015 budget later this week foreseeing a balance of its public finances for the first time since 1969.

“And that will also apply for the coming years,” Merkel said, adding that Germany had lived beyond its means for years which it was bringing to an end.

Berlin earlier this month said it planned an additional 10bn euros in public investment by 2018, amid calls by some EU partners to do more to help the eurozone economy.

“It’s thanks to budgetary discipline that we can invest,” Merkel told the Bundestag. l

Canada to see continued ‘solid growth’ in 2015: IMF

China to push growth of outsourcing industry

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday she backed a new multibillion-euro European Commission plan to kickstart the EU’s flagging economy, if the funds are invested wisely.

“The German government supports in principle the package submitted” by new EU Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker, Merkel told MPs in the Bundestag lower house of parliament.

“Investment is important ... but what’s important above all is which projects” it is ploughed into, she said.

France also broadly backed the plan, but stressed that it must be used to bolster Europe’s sluggish growth rate.

“France welcomes the proposals although we believe that ... they could be further improved to ensure that investment and therefore growth is a European priority,” government spokesman

n AFP, Ottawa The IMF predicted Wednesday that the Canadian economy’s “solid growth” over the past year will continue through 2015, but warned lower oil prices could be a drag on the economy.

The International Monetary Fund said in a report the economy grew an estimated 2.25% over the past year, led by energy exports.

“Solid growth is envisaged to continue while becoming more balanced,” it said.

This acceleration is likely to lead to a rise in interest rates in mid-2015 from a near-record low of 1% set in 2010, the Organization for Economic Coopera-

tion and Development (OECD) predicted in a separate report on Tuesday.

The IMF report noted that Canadian crude oil continued to gain market share in the United States amid some easing of infrastructure bottlenecks allowing more shipments. However, “lower oil prices would likely cool activity in oil-rich provinces,” the organization added.

The impact of lower oil prices, currently at a four-year low, would be partly offset by a pick-up in manufacturing.

Strong US growth and a narrower price discount for Canadian oil sold in the United States would also provide “some cushion,” according to the report. l

n AFP, Beijing

China will develop international outsourcing of high-value-added services to create new advantages in foreign trade, its cabinet said on Wednesday, according to the official government website.

The State Council will reduce corporate income taxes to 15% in a number of cities to encourage development of the high-tech, high value-added services outsourcing industry. The goal is to move Chinese industry away from relying on low cost manufacturing to be globally competitive.

The effort will focus on developing software and IT services, research and development, finance, and government services, the State Council said. l

Among the members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Venezuela and Iraq have called for output cuts. OPEC’s traditional price hawk Iran said on Wednesday its views were now close to those of Saudi Arabia.

Zangeneh said there was unity inside OPEC to “monitor the market carefully” but made no mention of a cut.

“The onslaught of North American shale oil has drastically undermined OPEC’s position and reduced its market share,” said Dr. Gary Ross, chief executive of PIRA Energy Group.

Russia, which produces 10.5 million barrels per day (bpd) or 11% of global oil, came to Tuesday’s meeting amid hints it might agree to cut output as it suffers from oil’s price fall and Western sanctions over Moscow’s actions in

Ukraine.

But as that meeting with Naimi and officials from Venezuela and non-OPEC member Mexico ended, Russia’s most influential oil official, state firm Rosneft’s (ROSN.MM) head Igor Sechin, emerged with a surprise message - Russia will not reduce output even if oil falls to $60 per barrel.

Sechin added that he expected low oil prices to do more damage to producing nations with higher costs, in a clear reference to the US shale boom. On Wednesday, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said he expected the country’s output to be flat next year.

Many at OPEC were surprised by Sechin’s suggestion that Russia - in desperate need of oil prices above $100 per barrel to balance its budget - was ready for a price war.

“Gulf states are less bothered about a price drop compared to other OPEC members,” an OPEC source close to Gulf thinking said.

OPEC publications have shown that global supply will exceed demand by more than 1 million bpd in the first half of next year.

While the statistics speak in favour of a cut, the build-up to the OPEC meeting has seen one of the most heated debates in years about the next policy step for the group.

“The idea of unleashing a price war against US shale oil seems strange to me. I doubt you can win this battle as most US oil producers are hedging a lot of their output,” said a top oil executive visiting Vienna for talks with OPEC ministers. l

‘ADB ready to work with new China-led bank’

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) headquarters in Manila

n AFP, Manila The head of the Asian Development Bank said Wednesday he is ready to work with China on a new infrastructure investment bank proposed by Beijing, despite fears it could undermine his institution.

The Manila-based ADB is too large and established to be threatened by the proposed lender, Takehiko Nakao told a foreign correspondents’ forum in the Philippines.

“If the AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank) is established, we are very happy to have the appropriate collaboration,” Nakao said, adding the banks could potentially co-finance projects.

Last month China and 20 other Asian countries signed a memorandum of understanding to establish the AIIB, an institution whose development has been driven by China and which will be based in Beijing, according to the Chinese state news agency Xinhua.

However the proposed lender is seen as a potential rival to existing Westernand Japanese-dominated institutions such as the World Bank and the ADB. The Japanese government has expressed concern, while the United States is reportedly fiercely opposed to the AIIB, which some analysts see as a venue to expand Chinese influence at their expense.

Nakao stressed there had been “no contact” yet between the ADB and the AIIB, although Chinese officials had discussed the matter with him when he was in Beijing.

He added that it was “understandable” that Asian countries would want such an institution because of the region’s huge need for infrastructure financing.

He said Asia needed $800bn a year in funding for infrastructure, particularly for energy and ports. Of the 20 other coun-

DILBERT

REUTERS

tries that signed the AIIB memorandum, only India and Singapore are considered large economies.

However Nakao stressed that the ADB had always been active in infrastructure, even as it also supports social services as part of its mission of poverty-reduction.

“The ADB’s focus has always been infrastructure,” he said.

“China has always been very supportive of the ADB so Chinese authorities have been saying (the AIIB) will be complementing and supporting the work of the ADB instead of challenging and going to be a rival,” he added.

'If the AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank) is established, we are very happy to have the appropriate collaboration' “There is no real issue about it. We can work with the Chinese authorities and the new bank if they do regional cooperation,” he said.

Despite its rapid economic growth, China still needed the ADB’s help in areas such as environmental protection, he said.

ADB officials later told AFP the lender was supporting a project to revive an overland “silk road” between China and Europe via Central Asia and the southern Caucasus in support of regional cooperation.

China is also proposing a “maritime silk road” link to Europe that goes through Southeast Asia and Indian Ocean states. l