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Hartal cuts into business

Sajjadur Rahman
An exporter was looking tensed when the opposition party called hartal last week, protesting the disappearance of one of its key leaders. The businessman was supposed to send his newly made apparels to a washing factory in Savar.
The exporter thought he would have got the clothes washed on April 23. But unfortunately that was a hartal day. So, he waited. But the next day was again a day of dawn-to-dusk strike.
Another exporter was scheduled to send a container of clothes to Chittagong Port, but he could not do so due to shutdown.
Both of them faced a common problem -- in transportation. Though Savar is around 30 kilometres away from Dhaka, no transportation was there to carry the clothes. So, taking anything to Chittagong Port was unthinkable.
In both cases, failure to take the products to buyers on time caused huge losses to the exporters. Many exporters lost a huge sum of money just because their buyers declined to receive the goods for delay.
The business community also expressed their concern seeing how the country's politics is getting self-destructive as the opposition parties observed five days of hartal in a span of eight days.
“We are worried...please help keep the wheel of economy moving,” said AK Azad, president of the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry, the apex trade body.
Azad said many foreigners who are in the country, cannot come out of their hotels due to the shutdown. The country's image is being tarnished, he added.
“Two days of hartal actually spoils three days as we cannot transport goods before the hartal day in fear of picketing and looting,” said Anwar ul Alam Chowdhury, a garment exporter and a former president of Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association. Unlike the Pakistan regime (1947-71) or that of Ershad (1980s), Bangladesh's economy now is not limited to a few areas of potentials or threats. Over 40 years of time, Bangladesh's economy has been developed and diversified to many areas and getting more and more internationalised.
The country's national budget is likely to be ofTk 160,000 crore in fiscal 2012-13 from Tk 786 crore in 1972-73. The budget size has grown by more than 20,256 percent in just 40 years. On the other hand, the country's dependence on foreign aid has decreased to 2-3 percent of the budget now, from as high as 50 percent in 1970s.
Bangladesh exported goods, particularly jute, worth a few crores of taka in 1970s, which has now become a few lakh crores of taka. The country has also been diversifying its export basket to come out from its excessive reliance on apparels. Now Bangladesh exports bicycle, ceramics, pharmaceuticals, frozen fish, leather and leather goods, vegetables, handicrafts and many more.
Local entrepreneurs continue to find newer markets by developing newer products. Their relentless efforts paid them off. Bangladesh bagged nearly $23 billion from exports in fiscal 2010-11. Such earnings were only $1.67 billion twenty years ago.
International trade that means export and import constitutes nearly 60 percent of Bangladesh's present gross domestic product of $ 110 billion.
The fate of the businessmen, who take risks and make investments for exporting finished goods, now depends on the whims of the politicians. Though the exporters get buyers, they cannot export on time due to strike, which is unacceptable in most countries.
"Transportation is the main problem during hartal. A lot of imported containers lie idle," said Shamim ul Huq, managing director of Maersk Line, a subsidiary company of the AP Moller-Maersk Group, which is a leading liner shipping company in the world.
Ahmedul Karim Chowdhury, deputy director (traffic) of Inland Container Depot at Kamalapur in the capital, also echoed Huq.
On Monday, the second day of this week's hartal, he said some 1,300 containers were stockpiled at the ICD because of no loading and unloading by transporters.
Syed Farhaduddin Ahmed, secretary of Chittagong Port Authority, said they delivered 797 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) of containers on Monday, down from 1,300-1,500TEUsonregular days.