Production at CUFL suspended

Production at Chittagong Urea Fertiliser Company Limited was suspended for an indefinite period on Thursday evening due to non supply of gas.
The country’s biggest fertiliser factory suspended production at 7.45 PM on March 17, CUFL sources said.
They said that due to acute gas crisis, the government decided to suspend gas supply to CUFL and divert it to Power Development Board’s gas fired power plants.
The objective, they said, was to improve power supply in summer.
Suspension of production at CUFL would enable the government to divert the gas supply to the power plants, said officials.
Residents said that they expected power supply to improve and the nagging load shedding in the port city to go following the latest government move.
Entrepreneurs said that their losses were piling up as several industries and factories they ha set up in the port city could not go into production for long due to an acute shortage of gas supply.
A number of gas fired power plants in Chittagong also remained out of production due to non supply of gas, said energy officials.
Officials said that CUFL had been suffering losses n recent years as its annual output dropped to 1.50 lakh tonnes from six lakh tonnes due to inadequate and erratic supply of gas.
They also said that various costly equipment of CUFL, including its turbine generator, heat exchanger, reformers and the urea reactor sustained damage due to corrosion.
They said that the fertiliser factory got only a fraction of 51 million cubic feet of gas it needed to remain in full production.
Read the original story on the daily New Age

Non-boiled rice OMS pushes up parboiled coarse rice price

The price of parboiled course rice, consumed largely by low-income people, has increased unusually before the boro harvest as the government sold non-boiled rice through its open market sales network in the past week, market people said.
Rice prices showed a declining trend in two or three weeks as boro harvest was nearing but in the past week, rice prices marked a fresh uptrend.
‘As non-boiled rice was sold in the week in some southern districts from OMS outlets, the demand for parboiled coarse rice increased, pushing up its price,’ said Pradyut Sarker, a trader in Dinajpur. Pradyut supplies rice in bulk to wholesalers in Dhaka and elsewhere.
On the wholesale market, the price of parboiled coarse rice increased by Tk 25–35 a maund (37.3kg) in the period. Retailers in the capital increased the price by Tk 1-2 a kilogram.
‘Traditionally, the poor people do not eat cooked non-boiled rice and therefore they returned to the market in the past week, pushing up the demand and prices of coarse rice,’ said Abul Hossain, a wholesaler at Santahar in Bogra.
But for some areas in Chittagong and Sylhet, people in whole of Bangladesh usually consume parboiled rice.
In its import drive, the government a few months ago procured a significant quantity of non-boiled rice as this category is cheaper.
Rice traders, meanwhile, said a fresh increase in rice prices is a temporary phenomenon and they said rice prices would now increase in the coming weeks.
They said that the early boro harvest, the largest rice crop, is set begin by mid-April.
Although boro harvest usually peaks up after mid-April, in some low-lying areas, early boro harvest begins after mid-March.
Rice prices marked a sharp increase in the last quarter of 2010 as the relatively poor forward stocks from the last boro harvest kept the market shaky.
High rice prices on the international market and limited availability, as Indian stopped export, moreover, held back the Bangladesh government and private sector importers from procuring enough stocks.
Read the original story on the daily New Age

Bangladesh OMS (Open market sale) photos