REPORT in a national daily on Saturday said Bangladesh Chemical Industries Corporation (BCIC) is on the brink with staggering financial loses and outstanding bank loans. Its operational losses deteriorated over the years and the government has so far subsidized it with Tk 28.52 billion till last year when the bank loans stood at Tk 37.25 billion. Report said BCIC factories suffered production loss ever since it was set up with rising cost. It is unbelievable that BCIC’s factories cost of per tonne fertilizer now stands on an average at Tk 24,000 while it sells at Tk 14.000. The compensation of such huge losses over longer years has already pushed BCIC closer to the brink.
It was basically set up to produce chemical goods such as fertilizer and other basic materials to reduce the country’s dependence on imports. But inefficient leadership, pervasive corruption, mismanagement and misappropriation of resources from within and outside has rendered it to almost dysfunctional. Only 10 fertilizer factories are now in production out of 20 and renovation and modernization of many factories are facing setback. In most cases international contractors and local suppliers in collusion with dishonest officials render implementation of projects ineffective.
Besides fertilizer factories non-fertilizer units like paper mills, insulator and sanitary ware factories, glass factories to name a few are also proving the major failure BCIC is facing and the government leadership is to mainly blame for failing to run the economy. When BCIC is failing, it is the failure of the government in the first place that needs to be accounted for. We know that pro-government employee union and officers’ syndicates have always laundered financial resources making BCIC factories sick and insolvent. The government has always subsidized inefficiency to give the impression that the economy is running at a time when BCIC suffered a total loss over Tk 7.21 billion alone last year to be the third highest loss-making corporation. We are at a loss how the government would salvage so many parastatal facing the brink.
We must say we have a highly corrupt dysfunctional government where leaders are always in the look out to minting illegal fortune instead of stamping out mismanagement corruption. It is easy to bail out ailing banks and industries with budgetary money but how the major industrial sector can be saved remains the big question.
