Reza Mahmud :
Bangladesh is losing a huge potential market in Bahrain to export its products due to some greedy and dishonest exporters.
According to the expatriate Bangladeshi businessmen and workers in Bahrain, there is a huge demand of Bangladeshi products there like vegetables, onion, garlic, chilli, dry fish, lungi, T-shirts, chanachur, puffed rice, chira and many more.
They alleged that some dishonest exporters from Bangladesh export low quality goods after getting order showing standard quality products, and thereby seriously harming our market in that country. “Suppose, in dry fish, the Bangladeshi exporters got order after sending standard quality samples. But when they export a container of those dry fish, failed to maintain the same quality. They export low quality fish. The Bahraini Standards and Metrology Directorate (BSMD) blocks the goods to enter the country,” said, Ikramul Islam, a Bangladeshi expatriate in Bahrain.
Ikramul said that the Bahrain Standards Authority maintains European and American standards.
“There is no chance to enter any low quality products there as the Bahrain Standards and Metrology Directorate, a government institution within the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, strictly follow the American standard,” he said.
Ikramul also said, “Even the BSMD never allow foods and other products beyond standard though those may be imported only for the foreigners.”
“Every product must be checked before it enters the country. So there is no chance to export low quality products to Bahrain,” he said.
Sources said, there are around three lakh Bangladeshi expatriate businessmen and workers in Bahrain.
It creates huge demand for Bangladeshi dry foods, Lungi, T-shirts, Shirts and other clothing, vegetables, edible oil, onion, garlic, chilli, Shrimp, dry fish and other products there. “Only vegetables market has created great chance for Bangladeshi exporters to earn lots of foreign currency from Bahrain,” Ikramul Islam, who came here on a month’s vacation, told The New Nation.
But some of the superfluous greedy exporters are seriously harming the country’s market.
“As an example, in January this year the BSMD seized a shipment of shrimp after proving that was adulterated,” he said. Arab Ali, a businessman staying in Manama, the capital of Bahrain for long, said, “The Manama’s Business Administration is seriously annoyed with the Bangladeshi exporters as some of them involved in adulterations in business.”
“The BSMD must open every container imported from Bangladesh. If they found products okay, then give permission to the importer to take delivery of the container. But if they found anything low quality or adulterated, they must seize that,” said Arab Ali over telephone.
Both, Arab Ali and Ikramul Islam said that the Bangladesh government should take strict steps against those dishonest exporters who are destroying the country’s image abroad.
