BANGLADESH

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has recommended hiking power and fuel oil prices.

Bangladesh should keep tightening monetary policy to fight inflation pressures, the lender said as it warned that increased government borrowing would further fuel inflation.

It asked the government to contain subsidy costs to have more space for spending in social and annual development programmes and recommended raising fuel and electricity price gradually to cut subsidy.

The government has twice increased the price of fuel recently and in process of increasing gas, CNG and electricity price.

IMF resident representative in Dhaka Eteri Kvintradze made the suggestions at a press briefing at the Bangladesh Bank headquarters in Dhaka on Monday to discuss the economic situation of the country.

The fuel price adjustment is needed to contain inflation and with targeted benefits for the most vulnerable to mitigate the impact, Kvintradze said.

"And again the decision will be taken by the government and people. We are pointing out the trade-off but decision will be taken by them."

She said there is a price difference between price in Bangladesh and Kolkata and it might lead to smuggling of the product.

SUBSIDY

The Georgia-born Bangladesh mission chief said focus fell on the subsidy issue as the cost is too high.

If the present trend continues, the subsidy costs would reach Tk 315 billion against the budgetary estimation of Tk 19.1 billion, Kvintradze said.

If there is no price adjustment, the subsidy would reach 3.4 per cent of the GDP, she pointed out.

"What is the trade-off? Subsidy grows larger and larger and because of that there is less budgetary space for social and annual development."

CREDIT EXPANSION

The credit expansion is growing and it would put pressure on the banking system, the IMF official said.

"Some of the banks are also heavily exposed to stock market and it creates problems in the market," she added.


INFLATION

The IMF representative said due to government borrowing from the banking system, reserve money is growing and it would put pressure on inflation.

Inflation has reached double digits and in future, it may increase if the present trend continues, she said.

She said that the central bank prudently increased cash reserve requirement and statutory liquidity ratio to contain inflation and there should not be any move to undermine the authority of the regulatory body.

BoP PROBLEM

Kvintradze said Bangladesh is facing negative balance of payment for the first time in a decade.

"Import is growing faster than export and remittance flow growth is growing at a slower pace and it put pressure on the BoP."

Taka is depreciating at a rapid pace and it depreciated to Tk 76.5 against a dollar in Nov from Tk 71 level in January this year, she pointed out.

The central bank also sold $1.4 billion to the open market for gradual depreciation of taka, she added.

"Bangladesh must safeguard foreign exchange reserve to meet its import payment and it should allow gradual depreciation of taka," she suggested.

REVENUE COLLECTION

The IMF official said the good news is revenue collection is growing and ADP implementation situation is also good.

She said there should be continued improvement in tax administration and new business-friendly VAT and income tax laws should be introduced.

$1 BILLION IMF LOAN

She said it is a process and the negotiation is going on.

"We will have another round of negotiation soon.

The maiden polls to the newly formed Comilla City Corporation will be held on Jan 5.

The last date for submitting nomination is Dec 2 while the scrutiny for the mayoral posts will be held on Dec 4 and for the councilor posts it is Dec 5.

The deadline for withdrawal of nomination papers is Dec 14.

Chief election commissioner ATM Shamsul Huda announced the dates on Tuesday.

The announcement came after a meeting at the Election Commission on Tuesday morning.

The commission has said it will use electronic voting machines (EVMs) at all polling centres.

Earlier, EVMs were used at 14 poll centres of a ward of Chittagong City Corporation elections.

On Oct 30, EVMs were used at 58 centres of the much-publicised Narayanganj City Corporation elections despite outright rejection by opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Voters had overwhelmingly accepted the EVMs as they were comfortable with the machines' easy options.

Comilla City Corporation was formed by merging Comilla Municipality and Comilla Sadar Municipality (South) on July 10 this year following a longstanding demand of the local residents.

According to the Local Government (City Corporation) Act 2009, the city corporation is supposed to go to polls within 180 days of its formation. So, the Comilla city elections must be declared by the last week of November and the elections held in the beginning of January.

Comilla City Corporation has 27 general wards and nine reserved wards.

Deputy election commissioner of Comilla region Abdul Baten was appointed as the returning officer along with nine assistant returning officers for conducting the election.

According to senior assistant secretary to the EC (local government) Farhad Hossain, a total of 169,273 voters will be casting their votes at the 65 polling centres with 421 voting rooms during in the polls.

This election is likely to be the last under the present Election Commission headed by Huda that expires in February.

Sponsors, promoters and directors must hold 30pc stake in listed companies and reach that level in six months, the SEC has decided in a meeting

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was quick to respond to the DSE board proposals that came from Monday evening's meeting.

After clearing the DSE proposals at a meeting on Tuesday, SEC spokesman Saifur Rahman told reporters that the condition has been imposed in line with the Securities and Exchange Ordinance 1969.

He, however, said the SEC was already working on the issue.

Saifur said a gazette will be published in this regard within days.

He also said the 'incentive package', aimed at boosting the capital market and compensation to the victims of continuous fall in share prices, will be announced on Wednesday afternoon.

According to a notification undersigned by SEC chairman M Khairul Hossain, the sponsors, promoters and directors will not be able to sell or transfer existing shares and also the bonus issues until they reach the stipulated level.

Moreover, the respective companies will not be able to declare rights share and raise capital through repeat public offers, it added.

After the SEC announcement making 30pc stake must for sponsors, promoters and directors, several major companies would have to buy back shares they had sold at high profits at the prevailing market prices.

Failing to do so, these sponsor directors would lose their control on management of companies they own not even 15 percent in many cases.

Currently, the sponsor directors of Beximco Limited hold only 13.25pc shares of the company, retail investors 76.45pc and foreigners the rest, while sponsor directors of Beximco Pharma hold 12.97pc shares, retail investors 52.8pc, foreigners 23.02pc and institutional investors 11.21pc, according to the DSE website.

In case of Uttara Bank, sponsor directors hold a meagre 8.13pc shares, retail investors 88.62pc and institutional investors 3.19pc.

Sponsor directors of City Bank own 12.88pc stake, Southeast Bank 28.14pc, National Bank Limited (NBL) 29.21pc and AB Bank a low 13.9pc. Prime Bank sponsor directors hold 43.25pc shares of the bank.

The DSE meeting came after the indices plunged to new lows over the past week leading to streets protests and then intervention from the prime minister. On Wednesday night, Sheikh Hasina chaired a high-profile meeting that resulted in decisions to prop up the prices.

Some 2.6 million students --an increase by 1,49,347 than last year's-- will sat for mathematics exams, the opening test for the primary and madrasah terminal examinations this year.

The exams are set to begin at 11am on Wednesday at 6,168 centres across the country and seven centres in Saudi Arabia's Riyadh and Jeddah, UAE's Abu Dhabi and Ras Al Khaimah, Libya's Tripoli, Bahrain and Australia's Canberra.

This is for the first time the results will be given following grading system instead of the traditional division system, Primary and mass education minister Mohammad Afsarul Amin told
Roughly 2.3 million students will take part in the primary terminal examinations, including 4,920 appearing in English version. Of them, around 1.07 million candidates are girls.

Meanwhile, about 0.3 million students will sit for the ebtedayee terminal examinations of whom 53.25 percent are girls, the minister told a press briefing on Tuesday.

He added that 4,003 candidates with disabilities would appear for the exams and would be given an extra 15 minutes to complete their papers.

The number of Talent Pool Scholarships to be given this year has been increased by two thousand to 22,000 while the number of general scholarships would be 33,000 against last year's 30,000.

Last year, some 2.48 million students appeared for the exams of whom 92.34 percent passed the hurdles.

The primary and ebtedayee terminal examinations began in 2009. The exams this year will last till Nov 30, primary education directorate's administration director Abdul Rouf Chowdhury had told earlier.

The three-hour exams will commence from 11am on every test date.