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IDCOL offers funds to eco-savvy brickkilns

The company will lend Tk 400a to 70 brickfields

Suman Saha
Infrastructure Development Company Ltd (IDCOL), a non-bank financial institution, will lend around Tk 400 crore to the owners of at least 70 brickfields to turn their brick kilns environment friendly by 2015.
The brick kilns will use Hybrid Hoffman Kilns (HHF) or similar technology.
The company will provide loan at a minimum interest rate of 10 percent against the current bank rate of 18 percent, said Nazmul Haque, director and head of investment for the IDCOL.
The HHF brick kilns can completely bum most of the fuel that is mixed into the bricks during firing, and thus drastically reduce energy use and production costs. They also dry the bricks by directing hot air into the tunnel from the annular kiln, which blocks greenhouse gas emission.
The cost of a single HHF unit with its production capacity of50,000 bricks per day would be around Tk 10 crore, Haque said.
Of the total amount for a particular unit, the company will provide Tk 6 crore as loans and the owner has to finance the rest with his own source as an equity capital.
“We want to finance environment friendly brick kilns as brick making is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions and pollution," said Haque.
The company also wants to increase the size of the fund if it gets positive responses from the entrepreneurs.
“We will increase the fund size in future,” said Haque, “But it will depend on responses from the entrepreneurs and performances of the brickfields.”
A single kiln that runs on the HHK technology will produce 15 million bricks and cut carbon emissions by 5,000 tonnes a year. A double unit kiln will produce 30 million bricks and cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 10,000 tonnes a year.
The IDCOL apart, a number of financial institutions including the Asian Development Bank are working on the sector.
The ADB last month signed an agreement to lend $50 million to Bangladesh to help improve the environment by financing more energy-efficient brick kilns.
The ADB will provide the funds in local currency to the Bangladesh Bank, which will re-lend the funds to participating financial institutions.
The financial institutions will then provide loans to brick makers who want to upgrade their existing kilns to cleaner ones or build new kilns.
Industrial and Infrastructure Development Finance Company Ltd (IIDFC) has so far funded four brick manufacturing units, said Shaymal Barman, manager at the carbon finance department of the company.
He said the brickfields in Bangladesh emit around 875 lakh tonnes of CO2 every year. The HHK kilns will reduce carbon emissions almost by half.
Barman said a total of 30 brick-makers have converted their kilns under the HHF technology.
Bangladesh has now around 8,000 brickfields that manufacture bricks of different grades, and other building materials such as brick chips, dust, soling and herringbones, said Ali Ashraf Iftekhar, general secretary of Bangladesh Brick Manufacturing Owners Association.
About 60 percent of their yearly production is consumed by different government departments and the rest by the private sector, said Iftekhar.
The industry employs around 20 lakh people during peak-season and eight lakh in off-season, he added.
In Bangladesh, around 95 percent of the brickfields use highly-polluting fixed-chimney kilns, as they require low capital and have high investment returns.
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Hailing the new fund of the IDCOL, Iftekhar said they will go for the fund if the company offers lower interest rate. Bangladesh has already laws that no licences for fixed-chimney kilns will be renewed after September 2012 and all such kilns will be banned from September 2013.
However, the secretary of the association urged the government to extend the deadline as they need more time to go for the new technology.
suman.saha@thedailystar.net