61 cars hit Dhaka streets a day

About 61 cars hit the already chocked streets in the capital city every day in the first seven months of the current year, giving good sales to car dealers and an uphill battle to inefficient traffic department.
Official data showed 12,905 new and imported reconditioned cars were registered with Bangladesh Road Transport Authority until July 2009 only in Dhaka.
The Dhaka city became the main growth centre of cars with other major cities like Chittagong, Sylhet and Rajshahi altogether having only 2,367 cars registered during the period.
BRTA officials said the number of registered automobiles will go up further if 5,979 jeeps, station wagons and microbuses which were also registered during the same period are put together.
The road transport authority registered 60 per cent more cars during January-July period this year than the year-ago period. It registered some 13,749 cars throughout 2008 and 8,020 of them were recorded in the first seven months of that year.
Such high sales growth must be a good news for 300 plus automobile show rooms and a dozen new car dealers in the capital, but comes as an added pressure on the city’s poor traffic management.
Experts pointed out that road spaces accounted for only 8 per cent of the Dhaka city area while 25 per cent spaces for vehicular movement were essential for a city for smooth traffic management.
The huge number of new cars along with unauthorised and unfit vehicles was blamed for the hours-long traffic congestion in the city’s major intersections and arteries.
Gridlock on a single road or intersection causes spillover effects on all adjoining roads and lanes as happened Thursday morning when cheering crowds blocked the Airport Road to greet the prime minister back home.
Dealers said car sales surged in the terminal months of the last fiscal year as buyers could anticipate in advance that car import tariffs would go up significantly in the new fiscal year that began on July 1.
Import of cars jumped in May-June period and many well-off people rushed to showrooms to buy or at least book cars before prices went up and stocks exhausted.
Easy access to bank loan for hire purchase and cheap gas also contributed to the car sales growth.
Eastern Bank managing director Ali Reza Iftekhar told New Age that car loans made up more than 30 per cent of total consumer loan portfolios of more than a dozen banks which lend money for hire purchase.
Those banks, including HSBC, Standard Chartered, City Bank, BRAC Bank and Dhaka Bank, find car loans marginally safer compared to marriage, lifestyle, executive, education and health loans.
Iftekhar pointed out that car loans provide ‘tangible security’ to bankers. Besides, cars have resale value which is another advantage, he added.
Dealers said higher duty would not stop people from buying cars because owning a car is not a luxury now.
The city’s unreliable public transport prompts even middle income families to own cars mainly to send children to schools safely, they said.
The growth of most other vehicles, especially bus and minibus used for public transport, remained almost static, BRTA records showed.
Alamgir Khan, a businessman, said he was forced to purchase a car six months before because of the notorious mass transport system. ‘I got simply tired of struggling to avail of public transport,’ he said as old town of Dhaka, where he lives in, is not adequately covered by public bus network.
Urban planners said there needs to be some restriction on the number of cars in Dhaka as cities like Singapore has to prevent city’s traffic situation from worsening further. BRTA limits the number of auto-rickshaws and taxicabs, but there is no bar on cars.
BRTA officials in a pre-budget proposal asked the revenue board to take measure by hiking duty to check import of cars, which are taking place of rickshaws.
The successive governments pledged to construct underground rail and flyovers to ease the city traffic, but those pledges remained in paper for the last one decade or more.
Former president of the Bangladesh Reconditioned Vehicles Importers and Dealers Association (BARVIDA) Abdul Haque told New Age that affordability of city dwellers enhanced because of bank loans.
Commercial banks are providing cars loans for the last several years giving a boost to car sales, he said, adding that sales had gone up gradually since 2005 on the back of greater access to bank loan.
BTRA data showed that until 2005, some 4,000 cars were registered in the capital annually. But it jumped to 5,633 in 2005, 7,403 in 2006, 10,244 in 2007 and 13,749 in 2008.
Transport expert M Rahmatullah observed that hiking duty alone is not a viable option to discourage car import unless mass transport system is improved adequately.
National Board of Revenue statistics showed vehicles worth Tk 2,070 crore entered into the country in the first nine months of the 2008-09 fiscal year. The import value was 40 per cent higher than the year-ago period.

Courtesy of NewAgebd