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Sugar mills stuck in huge losses Raw sugar imports rise 31pc year-on-year Sohel Parvez:   Falling sugar prices on the global market and increased imports have lowered the prices of the sweetener in the domestic market, putting state-owned and private mills in a tight spot. Raw sugar imports surged 31 percent year-on-year to 19.83 lakh tonnes last fiscal year amid the refiners' rush to capitalise on the lower international prices to build up stocks for export and the domestic market. But the International Sugar Organisation on Tuesday said the global sugar consumption needs to outstrip supply by at least three million tonnes before prices recover significantly. In other words, the organisation forecasts extended weakness in prices. Raw sugar price, which traded at $467.9 a tonne at the...

Bangladesh's apex group emerges as shoemaker to world This story appears in the September 8, 2014 issue of Forbes Asia Apex’s Nasim with his father Manzur Elahi. Photo taken from forbes.com News Desk: To see a different face of Bangladesh manufacturing, a country that has earned notoriety with its ready-made garment plants, one drives 25 miles north of Dhaka city to Gazipur district. Amid a predominantly industrial enclave of garment makers is a 24-acre site where 5,500 workers, mostly women, are busy stitching not clothes but a range of stylish leather shoes, reports forbes.com. This is the factory of Dhaka Stock Exchange-listed Apex Footwear, Bangladesh’s leading footwear exporter. It started manufacturing leather shoes more than two decades ago. Today it is among the largest shoemak...

More join queue for Malaysian 'second home' scheme Capital flight may amount to Tk 3,506cr as of April this year Sajjadur Rahman: The number of Bangladeshis enrolling on the Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) programme has been on the rise since 2011 after a decline during 2007-10, meaning more money is flying off the country. The Bangladeshis started to take up the offer in 2003 when 32 citizens chose to settle in Malaysia under the programme. The number jumped to 204 in the following year, 852 in 2005 and 341 in 2006, according to the Malaysian government. But the number started to decline and stood at 149 in 2007 apparently due to a political changeover in Bangladesh. In the following three years, from 2008 to 2010, a total of 228 Bangladeshi citizens took the offer. The number has star...

Unusual homes Lone House A lone house is seen at the construction site of an urban transformation project in Fikirtepe, an Istanbul neighbourhood in the Asian part of the city. The house, known as "lone house", belongs to a family who had refused to allow its demolition, bringing the project to a standstill for months. REUTERS/Murad Sezer Lone House The owner of the house has finally reached an agreement with the construction firm behind the project, paving the way for the building's demolition, local media reported. REUTERS/Murad Sezer Lone House A lone house is seen at a construction site of an urban transformation project in Fikirtepe, Istanbul. REUTERS/Murad Sezer Lone House An excavator demolishes the lone house at the construction site of an urban ...

Why Ebola is so dangerous Workers from UNICEF and partners speak with families about how they can best protect themselves from the Ebola virus disease, at the Marche Niger, a market in Conakry, Guinea, courtesy of this UNICEF handout photograph taken March 31, 2014. The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is the world's deadliest to date and the World Health Organization has declared an international health emergency as more than 1,000 people have died of the virus in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria this year. What is Ebola? Ebola is a viral illness of which the initial symptoms can include a sudden fever, intense weakness, muscle pain and a sore throat, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). And that is just the beginning: subsequent stages are vomiting, diarrhoea an...

In prison, still ominous Slack monitoring allows JMB to regroup M Abul Kalam Azad and Rafiul Islam: Banned Islamist outfit Jama'tul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) that carried out countrywide bomb attacks nine years back still poses threat of terror attacks. The government's flagging socio-political campaign against militancy and slackness in monitoring JMB activities since 2012 has given the outfit space to regroup, believe many officials of intelligence agencies. Hundreds of JMB operatives were arrested after the bomb attacks left one dead and more than a hundred others wounded in 63 districts on August 17, 2005. According to official statistics, 478 JMB men have been tried in 177 cases between 2007 and 2014. Of them, 51 top leaders of the outfit have been sentenced to death, 178 give...

Messi, Neymar to play for Gaza peace Online Report: Combining his love of world peace with his love of soccer, Pope Francis plans to host a celebrity soccer match this September to promote a diplomatic resolution to the ongoing crisis in the Gaza Strip. The exhibition game will take place on September 1 at the Olympic Stadium in Rome with "all-star players" like F.C. Barcelona’s Lionel Messi and the legendary – and contentious - Diego Maradona taking the pitch for the event, reports Fox News Latino referring to Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Besides Messi and Maradona, Brazilian start Neymar is expected to play along with Yossi Benayoun, an Israeli National Team star, along with former Italian star Robert Baggio, a renowned Buddhist, and former French player Zinedine Zidane, who professes...

Transactions via SWIFT rise 32.7pc The financial messaging network celebrates 20 years in Bangladesh Suman Saha: Bangladesh last year registered 32.7 percent year-on-year growth in foreign exchange transactions through SWIFT owing to an increase in trade finance payment. Around eight million foreign currency transactions in and out of Bangladesh were completed through the SWIFT network last year, according to Alain Raes, chief executive of SWIFT's Asia-Pacific region. Trade accounts for 56.1 percent of financial traffic sent by Bangladesh, which is 5.06 million a year. “Bangladesh has registered significant growth in trade finance as it is gradually becoming a manufacturing hub,” he told The Daily Star in an interview yesterday. Bangladesh's import payment rose 9.77 percent year-on-y...

43 workers return from Libya Online Report: Forty three Bangladeshi workers today returned home from violence-torn Libya as their South Korean employer closed a power construction project on security ground. A flight of Emirates Airlines carrying the migrants landed at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport around 12:00pm, said Zahid Anowar, assistant director of Wage Earners Welfare Board of the Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Ministry. The returnees are among around 200 Bangladeshis used to work for Hyundai Construction and Engineering, a South Korean Company in Benghazi. Ahsan Kibria Siddiqui, first secretary (labour) at Bangladesh embassy in Tripoli, said as the Korean companies started evacuating their employees some migrants are opting to return home. South Korea ...