Shipping industry of Bangladesh

Abstract

Despite Bangladesh has glorious history & heritage as a shipbuilding nation since ancient time, shipbuilding has been in focus only from the last couple of years. The optimism about this industry arose from the success attained by a number of local entrepreneurs who brought the name and fame to Bangladesh as a country with great potentials in shipbuilding by building and handing over some ocean-going vessels to overseas buyers. Since then, the shipbuilding in Bangladesh did not have to look back and now new opportunities are knocking at the door to flourish this industry further. However, due to global nature of this industry, an assessment of suitability to modern shipbuilding in terms of global standard is of prime importance. This paper focuses on studying some crucial competitive factors like labour skill, labour availability, labour man-hour, labour cost & productivity for local shipbuilding which are the inherent part for expansion of this industry. The analysis also focuses on the existing access to the resources like materials, knowledge and capital for shipbuilding. Comparison of these parameters with other nations have been made qualitatively and quantitatively to find the level of our shipbuilding. On the basis of existing condition and future vision, some recommendations have been made which might be useful for accelerating the development of this sector.