Two more new aircraft will be added to the national flag carrier Biman Bangladesh fleet in the second half of the year to carry passengers, said Civil Aviation and Tourism Minister GM Quader yesterday.
Quader also said the government has a plan to purchase a total of 10 new passenger carrying aircraft within 2019 to be gradually added to the current fleet of eight international passenger carrying aircraft. The minister, however, did not elaborate any further on it.
“Biman is now suffering because it does not have enough income to survive and grow. We have only eight aircraft, which are all very old,” the minister said.
Quader was speaking on civil aviation and tourism industry in Bangladesh as the guest of honour at the regular luncheon meeting of the Foreign Investors’ Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) at Sonargaon Hotel in Dhaka.
“We need to increase the number of airlines. We have to go for open sky policy so that the international airlines can come here to carry passengers,” he added.
About a new airport, the minister said this is the right time to build another airport because, after another five or 10 years, there will be hardly any space available in the vicinity of the capital to build such a sprawling infrastructure, he added.
Defending his stance, the minister said Bangladesh has a lot of potential to make profit from airport business by transforming the country into a regional hub of airlines like India, Singapore, Dubai and China.
The minister said, since the public-private partnership (PPP) is a lengthy process, the government may contract with a foreign company to build a new airport. “After 20 or 25 years of operation by the builder company, the property will be ours.”
The minister said three high quality scanning machines will be installed at Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka for efficient and state-of-the-art cargo scanning.
He blamed corrupt and politically-biased bureaucracy for the stalemate in the tourism industry though it has potential for development.
“The problem lies in the bureaucracy, which is corrupt. The bureaucrats do not work or let others change anything,” the minister said.
The global turnover of the tourism industry was $1 trillion in 2010, of which only 1 percent was secured by all the Saarc nations together. Of the Saarc nations again, India alone made half of the business, he added.
Three countries including Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka among the Saarc nations simultaneously announced 2011 as the year of tourism.
Developing the tourism sector is not the job of just any department or a particular department of the government, it is actually the responsibility of an entire nation, he added.
FICCI President AM Hamim Rahmatullah said the shortage of energy is the biggest barrier to attracting foreign direct investment in the country. Tax evasion and increasing costs of doing business are the other major barriers, he added.
Courtesy of The Daily Star
