Tag Archives: history
Agar The First Potential Premium Product
Published : Saturday, 03 August 2013 Md Joynal Abdin Sujanagar union of Baralekha upazila under Moulvibazar district is the birthplace of Bangladeshi Agar-Agar wood and Agar oil. The Agar entrepreneurs of Sujanagar claim to be the first producers of the product in this subcontinent. Their relatives migrated to Assam (eastern province of India) and started Agar business there. The Mumbai Agar is a product of the migrant Bangladeshi people. According to what they claim, the Agar business in Bangladesh started its journey from Sujanagar about 400 years ago. About 150 factories are producing the fully export-oriented Agar wood and Agar oil at Sujanagar. They are producing premium (high-priced) products by using all local raw materials and machinery. Currently, they earn about Tk 500-750 million a year by exporting Agar products. It is now mentioned as an industry in any government document. Though the history of Agar industry in Bangladesh dates about 400 years back, Indian literature denotes the existence of Agar wood 2,000 years ago. It is an integral part of religious rituals of Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, Taos, Sufis etc. In addition, it is widely used in Ayurveda, Unani, Arabic, Tibetan, Sufi and Chinese medicinal practices. The followers of Buddha believe that by burning Agar-wood and taking in its aroma one can reach the ultimate stage of meditation. It has found a mention in the 8th century tombs of Shahin Muslims. Agar trees grow in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Brunei, and Thailand. The leading Agar exporting countries are China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, India, the UK, Laos and Myanmar. There are few reserves of Agar trees in government-owned forests in Bangladesh. However, some dishonest officials of the Bangladesh Forest Department (BFD) often sell these trees on auction to middlemen. They do not have any Agar factories. They do not produce any Agar-wood or Agar oil. The middlemen then again sell the Agar trees to the local or foreign Agar producers. And thus the Agar-oil producers have to pay higher prices. If the government ensures transparency of the auction, the real entrepreneurs will be benefited and the industry will grow further. According to a study of the Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM), the world needs 4.5 million kilograms of Agar-wood per year and that is only the official figure. Unofficially, the world demands around six million kilograms per year. However, the producing countries could meet only 35 per cent of the demand led by India, the main producer, contributing only 12 per cent, Indonesia in the second place with seven per cent and Malaysia third with only six per cent. Thailand, Laos and Cambodia come after Malaysia. According to the study, 80 countries use gaharu or Agar products with the Middle East being the biggest importer. Only 35 per cent of the world’s demand is met by all Agar product producing countries. So there is a gap of 65 per cent between the demand and the supply of Agar products. So it is one of the overpriced products in the world. Bangladesh has a favourable climate for large-scale Agar plantation. We have skilled manpower and indigenous technology to produce the finest Agar wood and Agar oil. A big potential market is there. So the government should facilitate large-scale Agar production in Bangladesh. It can be the first Bangladeshi premium products to earn the highest amount of foreign currencies, if the necessary policy support is available from the government. Any public-private joint initiative help tap the enormous export potential of it. If Bangladesh does not take any initiative right now, other countries like Brunei, Malaysia etc may seize the opportunity to capture such a big market. ………………………………….. The writer is Programme Officer (Research & SME Journal) of the SME Foundation Continue reading
Emerging Market Stars Have Lost Their Lustre
A man counts Indian rupee banknotes near the Bombay Stock Exchange building in Mumbai. Photograph: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg Tue, Aug 27, 2013 India, 1991. Thailand and east Asia, 1997. Russia, 1998. Lehman Brothers, 2008. The euro zone from 2009. And now, perhaps, India and the emerging markets all over again. Each financial crisis manifests itself in new places and different forms. Back in 2010, José Sócrates, who was struggling as Portugal’s prime minister to avert a humiliating international bailout, ruefully explained how he had just learned to use his mobile phone for instant updates on European sovereign bond yields. It did him no good. Six months later he was gone and Portugal was asking for help from the IMF. This year it is the turn of Indian ministers and central bankers to stare glumly at the screens of their BlackBerrys and iPhones, although their preoccupation is the rate of the rupee against the dollar. India’s currency plumbed successive record lows last week as investors decided en masse to withdraw money from emerging markets, especially those such as India with high current account deficits that are dependent on those same investors for funds. The trigger for market mayhem in Mumbai, Bangkok and Jakarta was the realisation that the Federal Reserve might soon begin to “taper” its generous, post- Lehman quantitative easing programme of bond-buying. That implies a stronger US economy, rising US interest rates and a preference among investors for US assets over high-risk emerging markets in Asia or Latin America. The fuse igniting each financial explosion is inevitably different from the one before. Yet the underlying problems over the years are strikingly similar. So are the principal phases – including the hubris and the nemesis – of the economic tragedies they endure. No one who has examined the history of the nations that fell victim to previous financial crises should be shocked by the way the markets are treating India or Brazil today. First comes complacency, usually generated by years of high economic growth and the feeling that the country’s success must be the result of the values, foresight and deft policymaking of those in power and the increasing sophistication of those they govern. Sceptics who warn of impending doom are dismissed as “Cassandras” by those who forget not only their own fragilities but also the point about the Trojan prophetess: it was not that she was wrong about the future, it was that she was fated never to be believed. So high was confidence only a few months ago in India – as in Thailand in the early 1990s – that economists predicted that the local currency would rise, not fall, against the dollar. Indian gross domestic product growth had topped 10 per cent a year in 2010, and the overcrowded nation of 1.3 billion was deemed to be profiting from a “demographic dividend” of tens of millions of young men and women entering the workforce. India was destined to overtake China in terms of GDP growth as well as population size. ‘Sense of entitlement’ Deeply ingrained in the Indian system, says Pratap Bhanu Mehta , head of the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, was an “intellectual belief that there was some kind of force of nature propelling us to 9 per cent growth . . . almost of a sense of entitlement that led us to misread history”. In the same way, the heady success of the southeast Asian tigers in the early 1990s had been attributed to “Asian values”, a delusional and now discredited school of thought that exempted its believers from the normal rules of economics and history because of their superior work ethic and collective spirit of endeavour. The truth is more banal: the real cause of the expansion that precedes the typical financial crisis is usually a flood of cheap (or relatively cheap) credit, often from abroad. Thai companies in the 1990s borrowed dollars short-term at low rates of interest and made long-term investments in property, industry and infrastructure at home, where they expected high returns in Thai baht, a currency that had long held steady against the dollar. The same happened in Spain and Portugal in the 2000s, although the low-interest loans that fuelled the property boom were mostly north-to-south transfers within the euro zone and in the same currency as the expected returns. Indeed, the euro was labelled “a deadly painkiller” because the use of a common currency hid the financial imbalances emerging in southern Europe and Ireland. The downfall Phase Two of a financial crisis is the downfall itself. It is the moment when everyone realises the emperor is naked; to put it another way, the tide of easy money recedes for some reason, and suddenly the current account deficits, the poverty of investment returns and the fragility of indebted corporations and the banks that lent to them are exposed to view. That is what has started happening over the past two weeks as investors take stock of the Fed’s likely “tapering”. And the fate of India – the rupee is one of the “Fragile Five”, according to Morgan Stanley, alongside the currencies of Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa and Turkey – is particularly instructive. It is not that all of India’s economic fundamentals are bad. As Palaniappan Chidambaram, finance minister, said on Thursday, the public debt burden has actually fallen in the past six years to less than 70 per cent of GDP – but then the same was true of Spain as it entered its own grave economic crisis in 2009. Like Spain, India has tolerated slack lending practices by quasi-official banks to finance the huge property and infrastructure projects of tycoons who may struggle to repay their loans. Ominously, bad and restructured loans have more than doubled at Indian state banks in the past four years, reaching an alarming 11.7 per cent of total assets. According to Credit Suisse, combined gross debts at 10 of India’s biggest industrial conglomerates have risen 15 per cent in the past year to reach $102 billion. For those who take the long view, a more serious failing is that India has manifestly missed the kind of economic opportunity that comes along only once in an age. Instead of welcoming investment with open arms and replacing China as the principal source of the world’s manufactured goods, India under Sonia Gandhi and the Congress party, long suspicious of business, has opted to enlarge the world’s biggest welfare state, subsidising everything from rice, fertiliser and gas to housing and rural employment. Phase Three is when ministers and central bank governors survey the wreckage of a once-vibrant economy and try to work out how to rebuild it. India’s underlying economy is nevertheless sound and its banks are safe, say Mr Chidambaram and other senior officials. There is therefore no need to contemplate asking for help from the IMF or anyone else. Mr Sócrates said much the same in Lisbon three years ago. “Portugal doesn’t need any help,” he said. “We only need the understanding of the markets.” The markets did not understand, and Portugal did need the help. Continue reading
Evolution of the UAE passport
Evolution of the UAE passport Mustafa Al Zarooni / 23 August 2013 While history could be “the biography of great men”, as Thomas Carlyle wrote, we encounter it through collections of yellow-tinged papers and photographs and artefacts. Museums, which display these archives, are the house of history. They tell the tales of nations, people, their rulers, customs, beliefs and turning points. Al Dana Museum at the General Directorate of Naturalisation and Foreigners Affairs in Dubai is one such house of history. It has a good collection of important documents which young Emiratis must see to understand their country’s past. The collection includes travel documents and passports of the once Trucial States with each emirate having its own separate passport before the UAE Federation came into being 42 years ago. Colonel Ali Ghanim Al Mirri, Advisor for Naturalisation Affairs to the Director of the General Department of Residency and Foreigners Affairs, said, “The department looks forward to collecting more documents from Emiratis to enrich the museum, and show the people the history of their homeland, and the events it had witnessed. Boosting awareness about their history will help instil a sense of patriotic identity deeply in the hearts and minds of the young.” The collection includes a free pass document issued in 1966; a passport issued in 1973; temporary passports; change of the family book (citizenship document) from just a paper to a booklet; and passports in which the holders’ photographs were not shown as at that time privacy was strongly followed by the society. The other items showcased include passports — in fact, the travel documents — of all seven emirates before the establishment of the Federation. Over the years “There were no passports before the establishment of the state, and most likely only a travel document was issued,” said Colonel Al Mirri. “People travelled to GCC countries, east Asia and some African coasts for trade.” The travel document was usually issued by the Customs Office at the Ruler’s Court of each emirate. “Since the inception of the UAE Federation on December 2, 1971, and with the country going a long way towards modernity, passports were issued, and the nationals submitted their previous travel documents. Committees with members from reliable families with good reputation and well-known persons in each and every nook and corner of the country were formed. The members of those panels who knew every person in their respective regions were authorised to approve or reject the applications for passports those days,” he recalled. “In the early 1980s, a family book used to be issued to each family. The document was just a piece of paper. Its character and look changed many times, and at all times it looked like a passport but of brown colour.” “Then, the ordinary passports were of black colour and was renewed once every two years. Later, the colour changed to blue and the passport had to be renewed every five years.” There were five types of passports then — ordinary, special, diplomatic and temporary. The rules and procedures have changed. All indigenous and well-known UAE citizens are issued passports now and the process of granting the passport at present is different, as there are investigation committees and other procedures required before issuing the document. Colonel Al Mirri urged Emiratis who have such old and important documents to submit them to the museum so that everyone will benefit from viewing them. Thus, the museum would also expand and the public would benefit a lot in terms of understanding the history and evolution of the country as well as the naturalisation department. The museum is open to the public throughout the year. The naturalisations departments across the county had shown good cooperation by providing the documents in their possession to the Dubai directorate to be showcased at the museum, he added. Colonel Ahmed Mohammed Al Mohairi, Director of the Naturalisation Department at the directorate, said the progress the UAE had seen over the last 40 years might not have been achieved without the intimate relationship between the leadership and the people, and without the sincerity of the leadership and its keenness on mobilising all resources for the convenience and welfare of the people. Echoing the words of Colonel Al Mirri, he said it was necessary to document the history of the country, especially the pre-era of the Union, the early beginnings and the rapid development the UAE had seen after in a record short time. New passports The present biometric passports bear the same information saved on the Emirates identity card making it easy to use anywhere and they are safer. The passports are printed in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The printing of the UAE passport does not take more than a working day, and the document is delivered after a couple of hours if there is no overcrowding. “However, the passport renewal section sees pressure and overcrowding during the holiday and travel season,” he said. Manner of writing names Recently, a uniform way of writing the names of Emirati families has been adopted. The move was taken after some applicants faced some problems as their documents were being processed and issued in the old way. The department has addressed these issues. On the possibility of changing the family name or add a new name, certain rules and processes are being followed. Put a new family name or changing it is not allowed other than in some cases — that too only in the presence of the most senior and reliable member of the clan to which an applicant wants or claims to belong. That member has to acknowledge that he is a witness and that the applicant is one of his relatives and bears the same name of the clan. “Emirati woman does not follow the name of her husband or his clan, but she rather keeps the name of her clan or family,” he said. In the past, some people refrained from putting their photographs on the passports, and would, instead, write “refused”, especially veiled women. Some others allowed their photographs to be pasted on the passports but featuring only veiled faces or covering part of their faces. – malzarooni@khaleejtimes.com Continue reading
