POLITICAL TURBULENCE
Frozen food exporters incur Tk 180cr in losses in 3 months
The country’s frozen food exporters on Friday claimed that they had incurred losses worth Tk 180 crore in the last three months as they failed to make shipment of their goods due to political turbulence. At a news conference in the city Bangladesh Frozen Foods Exporters Association president Amin Ullah said that they had failed to make shipment in due time but at the same time they had to pay bank interest rates that led to the financial losses.
He said that the sector was now sitting on a stockpile of around 10,000 tonnes of frozen fish and shrimps worth Tk 1,000 crore at several storehouses.
‘Exporters are bearing the brunt of destructive politics,’ Amin commented.
The association urged the government to reinstate 10 per cent cash incentive for white fish exporters and to increase cash incentive to15 per cent from existing 10 per cent for the exporters of frozen shrimps.
It also demanded reduction of source tax to 0.25 per cent from 0.80 per cent for
the survival of the sector.
The BFFEA demanded interest waiver of loan from October 2013 to March next year, provided to exporters by state-run and private commercial banks and to set repayment date of present term loans from January 2017 so that they could avoid of being defaulters.
The association also urged the government to lift ban on exporting hilsa fish, as they ‘only export 6000 tonnes of hilsa out of 3.5lakh tonnes of production, which would not cast impact on local market supply.’
The prices of shrimps have been decreased by at least one dollar per pound as we cannot send the item to the buyers before the Christmas and now we have to sell shrimps at lower prices, the BFFEA president said.
Describing the present scenario of frozen food sector, he said that this was the peak season for collecting the shrimps from the farmers but they could not reach the processors due to the political unrest.
Former BFFEA president Golam Mostafa and vice-presidents of the association Kazi Belayet and M Khalillullah were present, among others.
-With New Age input
