Prospects of shipbuilding industry in Bangladesh

by Dr NM Golam Zakaria

The rich history of shipbuilding in Bangladesh dates back to a long ago. Due to congenial geographical location of this part of sub-continent, people living here used to craft wooden boat for commuting and transporting goods. They also nurtured their heritage of craftsmanship in boat building over many centuries and transferred this artistic skill to subsequent generations across different cluster of population.

Historical records say that Chittagong port was the best centre of building ocean-going vessels in the middle of the 15th century. Even in the 17th century, the entire fleet of ships of the Sultan of Turkey was built at Chittagong. Also in 1805, the British Navy built ships at Chittagong for the famous battle of Trafalgar. However, with the passage of time, the glory of shipbuilding in this region began to fade.

Shipbuilding revived again when a number of local entrepreneurs of Bangladesh brought name and fame for the country by developing potential in shipbuilding by handing over some ocean-going vessels to overseas buyers from Denmark, Finland and Mozambique. Bangladeshi shipbuilders have also handed over few ice-class vessels to a German company and more vessels are going to be delivered by the next few years. Thus shipbuilding in Bangladesh is marching forward in a way to securing a firm position in the world market and at the same time, the country is returning slowly to its past tradition of building ships for foreign countries.

Some leading local shipyards like Ananda and Western Marine are now engaged in building over 40 small to medium category vessels worth about $0.6 billion, mainly for European buyers.

Bangladesh is blessed with 9,000 sq km of territorial waters, 720-km long coastline and 200,000 sq km of Exclusive