Bangladesh Shipping Corporation to buy six new ships

The government has greenlighted the purchase of six new ships with Chinese funding for Bangladesh Shipping Corporation (BSC).

Staff Correspondentand Chittagong Bureaubdnews24.com
Published : 26 Jan 2015, 04:14 PM
Updated : 26 Jan 2015, 04:23 PM

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs at a meeting chaired by Finance Minister AMA Muhith on Monday also gave the go-ahead to sign the final commercial agreement with two firms to build the National Data Centre with the funding from China's Exim Bank.

Cabinet Division Joint Secretary Mostafizur Rahman after the meeting told reporters that the ships for BSC would be bought under the 'direct purchase system'.

The Chinese government will bear the total Tk 14.39 billion cost of the ships, each of which will be capable of carrying 40,000 metric tonnes of goods.

The state-owned BSC currently has five fully operational ships in its eight-ship fleet, MD Commodore Habibur Rahman Bhuiyan told bdnews24.com.

The other three became inoperative after their validity expired, he added.

After it was established in 1972, BSC in phases had gathered 38 ships in its fleet. But over the time, it had to sell most of the old ships as their operational validity expired.

Ships in the current fleet, on an average, are over 30 years old or even more. For this they cannot anchor in most of the ports around the world because of international regulations.

The BSC last year had announced it would take initiatives to acquire six new ships.