According to the news sources different efforts are taken by different means to save tiger- Bengal tiger. The government of Bangladesh set up a force to save tiger; the critically endangered Royal Bengal Tiger and also other animals. Also the Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio has backed a new wildlife protection initiative set up by Bangladesh to save endangered Royal Bengal Tigers from rustlers and poachers.

As far as the force is concerned, it will be of 300-members and may set up mostly around the Sundarbans mangrove forests since it is one of the last refuges of the tigers. This resolution has came quite a few months after they apprehended skins of 3 tigers and a large quantity of bones, the biggest heave of illegal tiger parts in decades. Whereas the actor has launched the organisation called ‘Save Tigers Now’ to save tiger.

The Sundarbans forests are stretched between India & Bangladesh; and around 400 tigers live in the area as current figure. Poaching is not considered as the chief threat to the tiger population in Bangladesh, till date. But this year started with the arrest of poachers with tiger skins and bones has raised doubts that an organized group od poachers was operating in the forests.

Minister of Environment and Forests Hasan Mahmud reported that the setting up the force to save tiger and wildlife was long overdue. According to him, the forest department staff in Bangladesh needs to be more trained, sophisticated and equipped. To set up the new Wildlife Crime Control unit, most of the capital will come from the World Bank loan of $36m (£21.8m).

Whereas DiCaprio himself is on a mission to raise $20m for the ‘Save Tigers Now’ organization, that aims to save tiger population and to double it by 2022.

We should also contribute a bit in this cause by tweeting, discussing and creating awareness to save tiger.

The state of Bangladesh is going through the illegal arms problem of ULFA which is group called as United Liberation Front of Assam.  The majority of the ULFA militant leaders have been deported to India but the matter of fact is that they have left their arms in Bangladesh.  Their arms are actually in a large number. ULFA gathered a large number of illegal arms in Bangladesh.

About 10 Lorries of illegal arms were caught by Bangladesh police in Chittagong port of Bangladesh.  That illegal arms case is an ongoing trial in the court of Bangladesh. Intelligence branches of Bangladesh are investigating it.  They have found evidence already that, Paresh Barua, the chief of army of ULFA was present in the Chittangong port to unload the arms. A group of leaders of the then Islamic militant government of Bangladesh also helped to bring and unload the arms.  Bangladesh has already arrested a group of Islamic militant leaders on this case.

The unloading of ten lorries of illegal arms in Chittangong port has proven that, ULFA brought large number of arms in Bangladesh.  On the other hand, they have deported and been caught without arms.  Therefore, it can be said that, they had another safe place in Bangladesh where they hide their arms.

Some intelligence sources said that, in Bangladesh ULFA works with Islamic militants together.  Now many sources are saying that, some militant groups of Bangladesh are using the arms of ULFA.  Bangladesh police have already recovered a lot of arms and ammunitions at Mymensing district in Bangladesh.  This district’s border is nearby Assam.  Therefore, police suspected that, these arms were left by ULFA.  The home ministry of Bangladesh is going to search and recover the arms left by ULFA.  Some of the police officers say that, it is not an easy job because more than fifty outlaw groups are in Bangladesh and most of them are Islamic militant.  ULFA worked with them and then most of the outlaw groups were nursed by an intelligence organization (now State Department of America says that it is a militant organization) of a particular country.

Current government of Bangladesh has blocked that interfere of that intelligence group in Bangladesh already.  Consequently the outlaw groups have already lost their power.  More to the point that already the trials of the criminals from the war are ongoing now and most of the big shot of those criminals are now in jail.  These criminals from the war are the main leader and the brain of the Islamic militant groups of Bangladesh.  They are supposedly the main agent of that particular country’s intelligence organization. ULFA has got that, they have no room in Bangladesh.  But, Bangladesh has to face the consequence of ULFA and the illegal arms of ULFA are one of them.  Islamic Militants are using their illegal arms.

Bangladesh is all set to frame a national gold policy to smooth the progress and expansion of jewelry business in Bangladesh. Last month the jewelers of Bangladesh had demanded the formation of a national gold policy to make conform for the Bangladesh’s jewelry market, and allow them to buy bullion from the international market.

BJA – The Bangladesh Jewelers Association had written a letter to M Faruk Khan, the Commerce Minister, seeking his urgent intervention in this connection. They claimed that the minister had assured them of fulfilling his earlier pledge of formulating the policy within three months.

After receiving the letter from the BJA, the ministry of commerce formed an inter-ministerial committee in April to evaluate the demand, sources in the ministry said. In the last meeting, the committee members decided to formulate the gold import policy after scrutinizing the relevant policies of the neighboring countries, officials said.

“The committee also decided to make a jewelry industry policy, under the supervision of the industries ministry, immediately after formulation of the import policy,” an official said. The import policy will allow Bangladesh’s jewelry manufacturers to purchase gold through proper channels, which will benefit both the government and the gold businessmen.

Considering the present critical situation of the goldsmiths, the government is very much positive about formulation of the policy. It would rehabilitate them and also change the present large-scale migrating trend of the local goldsmiths to neighboring India,” a commerce ministry said.

“It is the failure of the successive government that they could not formulate a national gold policy in forty years since independence. Most of the countries, including India, Pakistan and China, have formulated their own gold policies long ago. We are very happy indeed to know that a national gold policy is going to be formulated immediately,” BJA president Dilip Roy said.

He also said the policy would help the jewelry industry flourish as a major export-oriented sector. “Soon after the implementation of the policy, the government should concentrate on solving the problems and exploring the prospects of exporting gold and diamond jewelry. The sector has a huge potential across the world,” said Enamul Haq Khan, former general secretary of BJA.

According to the reports there is clearly a bright prospect of Bangladesh’s gold and diamond jewelry and stuffs in the global market. Dilip Roy concluded that especially in the Middle East, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong and Malaysia there is a good market for the jewelry from Bangladesh. At present, laws do not permit traders to import gold from the international market, or to export gold ornaments.

Well it seems like the ITD deal in Dhaka is going to get new opportunities in the region. Thus, Thai contractors will see greater opportunities to build basic infrastructure and public utilities in Bangladesh after Italian-Thai Development Plc has won this contract and ITD deal for an elevated expressway in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh.

The Italian-Thai Development Plc of Bangladesh has won the bid to build the four-lane road in three-and-a-half years. This is the largest public-private partnership in Bangladesh which is expected to create a lot of openings, approximately 5,000 jobs for Thai workers during the construction period.

The 40-billion-baht, 26-kilometre expressway will link Hazrat Shahjalal airport in northern Dhaka and Jatrabari district in the southeast of the city, helping to alleviate traffic congestion and enhance communications efficiency.

The Thai government was directly involved in negotiations with Bangladesh as part of its policy of supporting Thai construction businesses abroad.

The Bangladeshi government will own 30% of the project with financial support from the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank.

Kiat Sittheeamorn, president of the Thailand Trade Representative, and other Thai officials recently attended the foundation stone-laying ceremony for the project.

He said Bangladesh, which still lacks basic infrastructure, is planning several megaprojects including ports, a superhighway network, a new international airport, mass-transit systems and power generation.

The “Bangladesh: Vision 2021″ project of the Bangladesh government aims to make the country a regional economic and commercial hub by that year. Mr Kiat said to the officials that Thailand’s public and private sectors were ready to help the country meet that goal.

Well there are updates from Dhaka, Bangladesh that Bangladesh will fire the chiefs of the country’s securities regulator after an independent probe blamed them for the recent stock market crash, as per the finance minister’s statement.

The benchmark Dhaka Stock Exchange General (DGEN) index touched a high of 8918.51 points on December 5 last year before plunging to around 5,200 points in two months, gutting hundreds of thousands of small investors.

In the month of January the government ordered a probe into the crash after weeks of violent protests by investors and amid media reports alleging some traders manipulated the market with the help of regulators.

The government published the 284-page probe report Sunday, with finance minister A.M.A Muhith vowing legal action against the manipulators.

He said the government would replace the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman and his two deputies this week.

“The government thinks that the SEC should be recast to restore confidence in the capital market,” the finance minister told reporters on Saturday night.

The minister said the government would conduct further probe into the allegations that some businessmen linked to the ruling Awami League party were involved in a stocks scam.

The Dhaka Stock Exchange of Bangladesh, which now trades at about 6,000 points, was one of the world’s best performing markets between 2007 and 2010, taking Bangladesh up; but experts warned of a bubble in which many small investors were caught up.

To help overseas Bangladeshi workers, Bangladesh has launched a state-run Expatriate Welfare Bank to fund those workers who are going overseas and to handle their remittances which is a major source of foreign exchange.

From Bangladesh, about seven million people are employed abroad, most of them in the Middle East, and they send home about $10bn a year, as per the Finance Ministry officials. Remittances are the second biggest source of foreign earnings for Bangladesh after garment exports, which are worth about $16bn a year.

“Workers can borrow funds from the bank at lower interest rates to meet expenses for going abroad,” Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said while launching the bank.

“The bank will also help expatriate workers to send money to their families in Bangladesh at lower handling charges,” she said.

A senior official of the Ministry of Expatriates Welfare and Overseas Employment said it was hoped the bank would boost remittances.

Expatriate Welfare Bank, with an initial paid up capital of 5 billion taka ($69m), will offer loans to workers at 9% interest which is quite lower than that offered by commercial banks. “Borrowers will have to offer a collateral, but for those who cannot, there will be a supervisory loan,” the ministry official reported. Managed and private banks in Bangladesh charge more than 13% interest on general loans. So it look likes overseas workers of Bangladesh will be benefitted as well as the country.

World Bank is providing full support to Bangladesh and Nepal to protect their wildlife. Bangladesh and Nepal are getting helped by the WB for the first phase of a program on strengthening Regional Cooperation for Wildlife Protection in Asia.

The Washington-based bank has approved an amount of 36-million U.S. dollars for Bangladesh and a 3-million U.S. dollar for Nepal for their first phase of the Adaptable Program Loan, as determined in a bank statement released on the subject.

It said the project will assist the governments to enhance shared capacity, institutions, knowledge and incentives in tackling illegal wildlife trade and other selected regional conservation threats to habitats in border areas, while promoting ecotourism.

South Asia is home to 13-15 percent of the world’s biodiversity and hosts some of the most endangered species on Earth, it said adding habitats across Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal are home to over 65 percent of the 3,000 or so remaining wild tigers.

According to the World Bank, pressures such as deforestation, habitat loss, pollution, and poaching of wild animals have put the environmental and ecological balance under severe threat.

The project will tackle conservation threats to habitats in border areas and clamp down on the illegal wildlife trade of species such as the tiger, snow leopard, rhinoceros and elephant in increasingly fragmented habitats, it said.

As per the the World Bank’s statement, Bangladesh Wildlife is holding the largest remaining population of tigers in the Sundarbans & it is the largest single block of tidal halophytic mangrove forest in the world. Also the environmental and ecological balance of the country is under severe threat. Right now, studies about Bangladesh Wildlife show that 4-5% of faunal species and about 10% of floral diversity have become extinct in the last century.

For environmental protection Women’s Sari Squad, a small group of local women in southern Bangladesh has come forward as the guardians of the Chunati Wildlife Reserve. Wives, mothers and villagers go every day in their green saris to patrol the forest with the government rangers to seek out anyone who try to spoil the insubstantial eco-system of the reserve.

Dilwara, a member of the Women’s Sari Squad patrolsaid that the when the group moves through the forest in their green sari, the illicit loggers are intimidated and stay away from their sight.

The Chunati Wildlife Reserve was once a victim of excessive logging and farming but now it is beginning to thrive, as the green regularly encounters wild birds, monkeys, foxes and even elephants.

The Women’s Sari Squad patrols are just one aspect of a broader plan to nurse Chunati Wildlife Reserve back to its awesome natural beauty. The program to protect wildlife sanctuary in Bangladesh is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and Germany’s development agency GTZ. It supports government-community partnerships to work on the lines of participatory development so both parties can be benefitted from conserving the wildlife sanctuary in Bangladesh. The ongoing project has rejuvenated this 25-year-old wildlife sanctuary that serves as a passageway for Asian elephants migrating between Bangladesh and Myanmar.

Agartala, Oct 2 (IANS) India is explore the opportunity of structure power lines through the power of Bangladesh and provide power between the north-east and other parts of India, Union Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said on Sunday.

“We should be very cooperative projects to meet the mounting needs of electricity as well as in India and neighboring countries,” Shinde told a seminar here, “Opportunities for Energy Production”

‘According to the projections of the 17th Electric Power Survey, over 100,000 MW of power would be required by the end of the 12th (Five Year) Plan (2012-2017),’ he said.

The minister said that 50 percent of the capacity addition of 66,000 MW during the 12th Plan was expected to be contributed by the private sector. This sector contributed 10 and 32 percent to power generation in the 10th and 11th plans respectively.

He said several private-public projects were being executed for manufacturing power plant equipment, including turbines. ‘Non-availability and delayed supply of equipment was one of the major reasons for sluggish capacity addition,’ he said.

The day-long seminar was jointly organized by a media group and the Tripura chapter of the Institutions of Engineers (India).

Urging the private sector to invest in power transmission, Shinde said: ‘After the success of electricity distribution by the private sector through a franchisee model in some parts of Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh has decided to hand over power distribution in Agra and Kanpur to a private company on franchisee basis.’

He said that since India’s independence in 1947, power generation had increased from about 1,400 MW to about 167,000 MW.

According to official records, approximately 64 percent (108,363 MW) of energy comes from thermal (coal, gas and petroleum) sources, 24.7 percent (37,367 MW) from hydro sources, 2.9 percent (4560 MW) nuclear power plants and 7.7 percent (16,787 MW) of renewable energy sources.

It is sarcastic that Bangladesh, which was believed to be coffers of natural gas liquids, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) last Sunday with Qatar to import liquefied natural gas (LNG). The already expressed its intention in the memorandum of agreement to import the first four million tonnes of LNG per year from Qatar, the world’s largest producer of LNG. The signing of the agreement only underscores the desperation of the government to meet the acute shortage of gas in the country. The situation of gas-based mills, factories and power plants are known to all. Lately, housewives are also feeling the effects of the gas crisis for the supply of piped gas for their stoves are still very rare in most of the day.

Since the prospect of finding, either onshore or offshore, adequate new gas reserves very soon is remote, the government does not have any other alternative but to buy gas from outside sources. It has tried in vain to convince neighboring Myanmar to export gas to Bangladesh. Since there is no scope for getting piped gas from outside, the energy ministry has opted for LNG import. However, it would not be anyway irrelevant if one wants to know the economics involved in LNG import. In the ’90s, LNG was a cheap fuel. But the scenario has changed very fast since 2005 when global prices of crude oil started soaring and reached the record high in 2008. As more and more countries chose LNG as an alternative to petroleum products, the sellers got the upper-hand and started dictating prices. The quantity of LNG exported in 2005 was 140 million tonnes and the same is expected to reach 300 million tonnes in 2012.

The prices of LNG, though less than that of crude oil, do, at times, turn volatile in line with the global oil market behavior. Besides, the use of LNG would necessitate the building of a deep-sea terminal having the facility of LNG re-gasification and also a transmission line to carry the gas to the shore. The construction of terminal and transmission line involves a substantial cost. The government has reportedly invited international bids for construction of a terminal at an estimated cost of Tk. 10 billion. One can thus raise a question about the economic rationale behind the official move to import LNG, particularly when the cost of LNG would outstrip gas prices two to three times.

At least two factors have apparently prompted the government to opt for LNG import. Firstly, both private and public sectors have invested funds worth billions in gas-based industries and power plants and those would become junk without gas supply. So, gas supply has to be ensured in order to keep those units operational up to their maximum capacity. Secondly, signs are quite strong that the global energy prices, particularly that of crude oil, would continue to remain high in the foreseeable future. Thus, getting infrastructures in place for the use of LNG as an alternative to fuel oils would rather be a practical idea.

With the signing of the Memorandum of the Government of Qatar has taken the first step. It ‘really builds the terminal and other facilities over time. Economic toll would definitely have a filibuster. However, imports of LNG are partial solution to a bigger problem. The best solution is, of course, must find new reserves of gas in the house. Government should intensify its efforts to pursue BAPEX (Bangladesh Petroleum Exploration Company), and international oil companies for exploration of hydrocarbons in both terrestrial and marine areas.