Bangladeshi chest doctor Kazi Saifuddin Bennoor has seen many misleading cigarette advertisements, but the one that suggested smoking could make childbirth easier plumbed new depths.
Advertisements telling smokers they are smarter, more energetic and better lovers than their non-smoking counterparts are a familiar sight across Bangladesh -- something unimaginable in most other countries.
One in a rural area, Bennoor remembers, said that "if a lady smokes, her baby will be smaller and it will be easier to deliver, the labour will be less painful".
"These are very ruthless advertisements," said Saifuddin, an associate professor at Bangladesh's National Hospital for Chest Diseases.
The promotion is being linked to an alarming rise in tobacco use in the impoverished South Asian country, particularly among women and the young -- a trend repeated across many developing countries, anti-tobacco groups say.
The World Health Organisation warns that tobacco companies are targeting women in developing countries as a new growth market and Dhaka-based doctors treating lung diseases report they are seeing more female patients.
Around 28 percent of adult Bangladeshi women now use tobacco, according to the latest WHO survey, and 43 percent of the adult population -- or 41 million people -- use tobacco in some form, up from 37 percent in 2004.
"(Tobacco use) has become an epidemic among rural women. It's a very serious health issue," a government adviser on health, Syed Mudasser Ali, told AFP, adding that anti-smoking laws were poorly enforced.
Tobacco advertising was banned in Bangladesh in 2005, so the advertisements are usually fly-posters that do not specify the company behind the message.
"Only a negligible number of people have been fined for breaching tobacco laws over the last few years," Ali said.
Officially 57,000 people die in Bangladesh of tobacco use annually, but that figure was likely a "huge underestimate".
The country fits a pattern emerging across the region of rising rates of female tobacco use, particularly in Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines and Cambodia.
This rise is largely because more Asian women are entering the workforce, have disposable income and see smoking as "modern and liberated," said doctor Mary Assunta, director of the International Tobacco Control Project.
"I've seen tobacco companies' marketing campaigns on my university campus and in residential dormitories," said one 25-year-old Bangladeshi female smoker who used to smoke a pack a day but is trying to quit on her doctor's advice.
"They approach students with a questionnaire and ask them to fill it in to win T-shirts or lighters," she said, adding that she started smoking as her friends in class at Dhaka University all smoked.
Tobacco companies are encouraging the trend, viewing women in developing countries as their "largest unexploited market", according to the WHO -- which has chosen the theme of tobacco marketing to women for 2010 No Tobacco Day on May 31.
"We see clear marketing strategies targeting women in Asia such as lipstick-type cigarette packs in Indonesia, Malaysia and Laos," said Assunta.
The pretty, small packets of ultra-thin cigarettes are designed to be something a woman would like to carry around with her at all times, just like her favourite lipstick.
"These fit easily into women's purses. Cigarette packs are coloured pink and there are even fruit flavoured cigarettes," Assunta said
Tobacco companies in Bangladesh contacted by AFP all denied using illegal fly-posters or point of sales marketing, which the ministry of health hoped to stop with an amended version of the 2005 law.
The market is dominated by volume leader Dhaka Tobacco, which has a 40-percent share and monopolises low-end sales.
British American Tobacco, which makes the popular Pall Mall and John Player Gold Leaf cigarettes, dominates the 140 million dollar premium tobacco market with its Benson and Hedges brand.
"BAT Bangladesh markets cigarettes in Bangladesh in full compliance of all applicable laws, rules, and regulations," company spokesman Shamim Zahedy told AFP, adding that their marketing only targeted existing smokers.
In February, WHO chief Margaret Chan said that developing countries were the "new frontier" for tobacco marketing.
"If Big Tobacco is in retreat in some parts of the world, it is on the march in others," she said in a speech on the fifth anniversary of an international convention on tobacco control.
"In these countries as elsewhere, girls and women are a market with attractive and lucrative growth potential, and they are likewise being targeted," Chan said.
In developed countries, tobacco companies have seen their marketing restricted or banned and sales are falling as public health campaigns and tight rules on smoking in public places hit profits.
As a result, developing markets are becoming "increasingly important" for transnational companies such as BAT and Philip Morris International -- which is aggressively expanding in the Philippines and Indonesia, said Assunta.
"Tobacco companies are definitely putting effort into consolidating their positions in low income countries," she said.
Even Bangladesh, where nearly 40 percent of the population of 144 million lives on less than a dollar a day, is a lucrative tobacco market, with annual sales estimated at around one billion dollars.
In Bangladesh's remote, rural areas, the health risks of tobacco use are not always well known, Bennoor said, making poor farmers -- particularly women who are generally less well educated -- an easy target.
"It is a vicious cycle: people who are poor are more vulnerable to tobacco addiction, and then they are smoking, and it makes them poorer," he said.
For Bangladesh's rural poor, approximately 4.5 percent of household expenditure goes on tobacco, according to WHO estimates.
In some areas, there have been signs of a fightback against the advertising, however.
At Dhaka University, one fly-poster claiming "smoking makes you smarter and more manly" prompted a student-run counter-campaign
"We are smart and we don't smoke," said handmade posters plastered over the original adverts on the university's city-centre campus.
Showing posts with label bangladesh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bangladesh. Show all posts
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
India Worries as China Builds Ports in South Asia
India Worries as China Builds Ports in South Asia
Gemunu Amarasinghe/Associated Press
A Chinese construction crew at work in Hambantota, Sri Lanka, in 2008. China has invested millions to develop the port.
Published: February 15, 2010
HAMBANTOTA, Sri Lanka — For years, ships from other countries, laden with oil, machinery, clothes and cargo, sped past this small town near India as part of the world’s brisk trade with China.
Ships will dock along this long wall and other similar structures nearby once the port in Hambantota is complete.
Enlarge This Image
Nadeem Khawer/European Pressphoto Agency
As trade in South Asia grows, China has been developing port facilities like this one in Gwadar in the southwest of Pakistan.
Now, China is investing millions to turn this fishing hamlet into a booming new port, furthering an ambitious trading strategy in South Asia that is reshaping the region and forcing India to rethink relations with its neighbors.
As trade in the region grows more lucrative, China has been developing port facilities in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar, and it is planning to build railroad lines in Nepal. These projects, analysts say, are part of a concerted effort by Chinese leaders and companies to open and expand markets for their goods and services in a part of Asia that has lagged behind the rest of the continent in trade and economic development.
But these initiatives are irking India, whose government worries that China is expanding its sphere of regional influence by surrounding India with a “string of pearls” that could eventually undermine India’s pre-eminence and potentially rise to an economic and security threat.
“There is a method in the madness in terms of where they are locating their ports and staging points,” Kanwal Sibal, a former Indian foreign secretary who is now a member of the government’s National Security Advisory Board, said of China. “This kind of effort is aimed at counterbalancing and undermining India’s natural influence in these areas.”
India and China, the world’s two fastest-growing economies, have a history of tense relations. They share a contested Himalayan border over which they fought a war in 1962. India has given shelter to the Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet as China exerted control over it. And China has close military ties with Pakistan, with which India has fought three wars.
But the two countries also do an increasingly booming business with each other. China recently became India’s largest trading partner, and both have worked together to advance similar positions in global trade and climate change negotiations.
Chinese officials deny ulterior motives for their projects in South Asia. And top Indian leaders have tried to play down talk of a rivalry with China, saying there is enough room in the world for both economies to rise simultaneously.
As recently as the 1990s, China’s and India’s trade with four South Asian nations — Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan — was roughly equal. But over the last decade, China has outpaced India in deepening ties.
For China, these countries provide both new markets and alternative routes to the Indian Ocean, which its ships now reach through a narrow channel between Indonesia and Malaysia known as the Strait of Malacca. India, for its part, needs to improve economic ties with its neighbors to broaden its growth and to help foster peace in the region. Some of the shift in trade toward China comes from heightened tensions between India and Pakistan, which has hampered trade between the two countries. But China has also made inroads in nations that have been more friendly with India, including Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal.
Moreover, protectionist sentiments have marred India’s relationships with its neighbors. South Asia has a free-trade agreement, but countries that are part of the pact get few benefits, economists say, because India and its neighbors refuse to lower tariffs on many goods and services to protect their own businesses. By contrast, the countries of Southeast Asia have minimal or no duties on most goods and services that they import from one another.
India has had some success in establishing closer ties with Sri Lanka, with which it has a strong bilateral trade agreement. But China has become a partner of choice for big projects here like the Hambantota port. China’s Export-Import Bank is financing 85 percent of the cost of the $1 billion project, and China Harbour Engineering, which is part of a state-owned company, is building it. Similar arrangements have been struck for an international airport being built nearby.
Sri Lankan officials want to turn Hambantota, which was devastated by the 2004 tsunami and is the home constituency for President Mahinda Rajapaksa, into the second-largest urban area in the country after the capital, Colombo. (It is the ninth-biggest today.) The government is also building a convention center, a government complex and a cricket stadium.
Sri Lanka needs foreign assistance to make those dreams a reality, because the government’s finances are stretched by a large debt it accumulated in paying for a 25-year civil war that ended in May. In 2009, the country borrowed $2.6 billion from the International Monetary Fund.
Mr. Rajapaksa has said he offered the Hambantota port project first to India, but officials there turned it down. In an interview, Jaliya Wickramasuriya, Sri Lanka’s ambassador to the United States, said the country looked for investors in America and around the world, but China offered the best terms. “We don’t have favorites,” he said.
Still, Sri Lankan officials have refused to disclose information that would allow analysts to compare China’s proposals with those submitted by other bidders. The country has also kept private details about other projects that are being financed and built by China, including a power plant, an arts center and a special economic zone.
The Sunday Times, a Sri Lankan newspaper, recently estimated that China was involved in projects totaling $6 billion — more than any other country, including India and Japan, which have historically been big donors and investors in Sri Lanka.
Harsha de Silva, a prominent economist in Colombo and an adviser to the country’s main opposition party, said the Sri Lankan government appeared to prefer awarding projects to China because it did not impose “conditions for reform, transparency and competitive bidding” that would be part of contracts with countries like India and the United States or organizations like the World Bank.
Other analysts say China is winning big projects here and elsewhere in the region because its companies offer lower costs. Chinese companies are also competitive because they have acquired a lot of expertise in building large infrastructure projects in China, said Jerry Lou, Morgan Stanley’s China strategist.
In 10 years, Chinese companies have become the biggest suppliers to ports of cranes used to move shipping containers, displacing South Korean and Japanese companies, he said. “They are running at very high efficiency and at the lowest costs,” Mr. Lou said. “China is a game-changer, rather than a new player in the world’s construction industry.”
India is starting to respond to China’s growing influence by becoming more aggressive in courting trade partners. India recently signed a free-trade deal with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and South Korea. Officials have even begun talking about signing a trade deal with China to bolster exports.
India’s chief trade negotiator, D. K. Mittal, acknowledged that the country’s economic ties with its neighbors were not as strong as they should be and blamed political distrust between the countries. But he said leaders were now determined to improve economic relations, something he said was highlighted in a recent agreement with Bangladesh.
In that deal, India agreed to sell electricity to Bangladesh, provide it with a $1 billion line of credit for infrastructure projects and reduce tariffs on imports. Bangladesh agreed to allow Indian ships to use a port that is being redeveloped by China. “The political leaders have to rise above and say, ‘I want this to happen,’ ” Mr. Mittal said in an interview. “That’s what the leaders are realizing.”
Gemunu Amarasinghe/Associated Press
A Chinese construction crew at work in Hambantota, Sri Lanka, in 2008. China has invested millions to develop the port.
Published: February 15, 2010
HAMBANTOTA, Sri Lanka — For years, ships from other countries, laden with oil, machinery, clothes and cargo, sped past this small town near India as part of the world’s brisk trade with China.
Ships will dock along this long wall and other similar structures nearby once the port in Hambantota is complete.
Enlarge This Image
Nadeem Khawer/European Pressphoto Agency
As trade in South Asia grows, China has been developing port facilities like this one in Gwadar in the southwest of Pakistan.
Now, China is investing millions to turn this fishing hamlet into a booming new port, furthering an ambitious trading strategy in South Asia that is reshaping the region and forcing India to rethink relations with its neighbors.
As trade in the region grows more lucrative, China has been developing port facilities in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar, and it is planning to build railroad lines in Nepal. These projects, analysts say, are part of a concerted effort by Chinese leaders and companies to open and expand markets for their goods and services in a part of Asia that has lagged behind the rest of the continent in trade and economic development.
But these initiatives are irking India, whose government worries that China is expanding its sphere of regional influence by surrounding India with a “string of pearls” that could eventually undermine India’s pre-eminence and potentially rise to an economic and security threat.
“There is a method in the madness in terms of where they are locating their ports and staging points,” Kanwal Sibal, a former Indian foreign secretary who is now a member of the government’s National Security Advisory Board, said of China. “This kind of effort is aimed at counterbalancing and undermining India’s natural influence in these areas.”
India and China, the world’s two fastest-growing economies, have a history of tense relations. They share a contested Himalayan border over which they fought a war in 1962. India has given shelter to the Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet as China exerted control over it. And China has close military ties with Pakistan, with which India has fought three wars.
But the two countries also do an increasingly booming business with each other. China recently became India’s largest trading partner, and both have worked together to advance similar positions in global trade and climate change negotiations.
Chinese officials deny ulterior motives for their projects in South Asia. And top Indian leaders have tried to play down talk of a rivalry with China, saying there is enough room in the world for both economies to rise simultaneously.
As recently as the 1990s, China’s and India’s trade with four South Asian nations — Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan — was roughly equal. But over the last decade, China has outpaced India in deepening ties.
For China, these countries provide both new markets and alternative routes to the Indian Ocean, which its ships now reach through a narrow channel between Indonesia and Malaysia known as the Strait of Malacca. India, for its part, needs to improve economic ties with its neighbors to broaden its growth and to help foster peace in the region. Some of the shift in trade toward China comes from heightened tensions between India and Pakistan, which has hampered trade between the two countries. But China has also made inroads in nations that have been more friendly with India, including Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal.
Moreover, protectionist sentiments have marred India’s relationships with its neighbors. South Asia has a free-trade agreement, but countries that are part of the pact get few benefits, economists say, because India and its neighbors refuse to lower tariffs on many goods and services to protect their own businesses. By contrast, the countries of Southeast Asia have minimal or no duties on most goods and services that they import from one another.
India has had some success in establishing closer ties with Sri Lanka, with which it has a strong bilateral trade agreement. But China has become a partner of choice for big projects here like the Hambantota port. China’s Export-Import Bank is financing 85 percent of the cost of the $1 billion project, and China Harbour Engineering, which is part of a state-owned company, is building it. Similar arrangements have been struck for an international airport being built nearby.
Sri Lankan officials want to turn Hambantota, which was devastated by the 2004 tsunami and is the home constituency for President Mahinda Rajapaksa, into the second-largest urban area in the country after the capital, Colombo. (It is the ninth-biggest today.) The government is also building a convention center, a government complex and a cricket stadium.
Sri Lanka needs foreign assistance to make those dreams a reality, because the government’s finances are stretched by a large debt it accumulated in paying for a 25-year civil war that ended in May. In 2009, the country borrowed $2.6 billion from the International Monetary Fund.
Mr. Rajapaksa has said he offered the Hambantota port project first to India, but officials there turned it down. In an interview, Jaliya Wickramasuriya, Sri Lanka’s ambassador to the United States, said the country looked for investors in America and around the world, but China offered the best terms. “We don’t have favorites,” he said.
Still, Sri Lankan officials have refused to disclose information that would allow analysts to compare China’s proposals with those submitted by other bidders. The country has also kept private details about other projects that are being financed and built by China, including a power plant, an arts center and a special economic zone.
The Sunday Times, a Sri Lankan newspaper, recently estimated that China was involved in projects totaling $6 billion — more than any other country, including India and Japan, which have historically been big donors and investors in Sri Lanka.
Harsha de Silva, a prominent economist in Colombo and an adviser to the country’s main opposition party, said the Sri Lankan government appeared to prefer awarding projects to China because it did not impose “conditions for reform, transparency and competitive bidding” that would be part of contracts with countries like India and the United States or organizations like the World Bank.
Other analysts say China is winning big projects here and elsewhere in the region because its companies offer lower costs. Chinese companies are also competitive because they have acquired a lot of expertise in building large infrastructure projects in China, said Jerry Lou, Morgan Stanley’s China strategist.
In 10 years, Chinese companies have become the biggest suppliers to ports of cranes used to move shipping containers, displacing South Korean and Japanese companies, he said. “They are running at very high efficiency and at the lowest costs,” Mr. Lou said. “China is a game-changer, rather than a new player in the world’s construction industry.”
India is starting to respond to China’s growing influence by becoming more aggressive in courting trade partners. India recently signed a free-trade deal with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and South Korea. Officials have even begun talking about signing a trade deal with China to bolster exports.
India’s chief trade negotiator, D. K. Mittal, acknowledged that the country’s economic ties with its neighbors were not as strong as they should be and blamed political distrust between the countries. But he said leaders were now determined to improve economic relations, something he said was highlighted in a recent agreement with Bangladesh.
In that deal, India agreed to sell electricity to Bangladesh, provide it with a $1 billion line of credit for infrastructure projects and reduce tariffs on imports. Bangladesh agreed to allow Indian ships to use a port that is being redeveloped by China. “The political leaders have to rise above and say, ‘I want this to happen,’ ” Mr. Mittal said in an interview. “That’s what the leaders are realizing.”
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Hewlett-Packard extends music service to Southeast Asia
SINGAPORE - Hewlett-Packard (HP) is entering Southeast Asia's music download market through an expanded partnership with Universal Music.
The free service, which will be available in 18 countries across South and Southeast Asia from 28 November, gives HP customers access to Universal’s music library. The service allows 1,120 songs to be downloaded during a 12-month period, 120 of which can be downloaded for indefinite ownership. The rest will be available with a validity of one year.
The service will specifically be available in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Thailand.
According to the company, this is the first music-service partnership between Universal Music and HP in Southeast Asia. “Consumers are increasingly streaming and storing their favourite music files on their PC,” said Dennis Mark, VP of marketing for HP Personal Systems Group for Asia-Pacific and Japan. “Our partnership with Universal Music will amplify consumers’ entertainment gratification and make their notebook a one-stop shop for all their multimedia needs.”
HP’s expansion into the sector mirrors similar services launched in the region to attract young consumers. This year, Nokia rolled out its Comes With Music platform in the region. Motorola’s MotoMusic, which enjoyed success in China after its 2006 debut but was slower to gain ground elsewhere in the region, also launched in Singapore last year. That service closed down in June.
HP initially launched this service in other Asia-Pacific markets last month.
The free service, which will be available in 18 countries across South and Southeast Asia from 28 November, gives HP customers access to Universal’s music library. The service allows 1,120 songs to be downloaded during a 12-month period, 120 of which can be downloaded for indefinite ownership. The rest will be available with a validity of one year.
The service will specifically be available in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Thailand.
According to the company, this is the first music-service partnership between Universal Music and HP in Southeast Asia. “Consumers are increasingly streaming and storing their favourite music files on their PC,” said Dennis Mark, VP of marketing for HP Personal Systems Group for Asia-Pacific and Japan. “Our partnership with Universal Music will amplify consumers’ entertainment gratification and make their notebook a one-stop shop for all their multimedia needs.”
HP’s expansion into the sector mirrors similar services launched in the region to attract young consumers. This year, Nokia rolled out its Comes With Music platform in the region. Motorola’s MotoMusic, which enjoyed success in China after its 2006 debut but was slower to gain ground elsewhere in the region, also launched in Singapore last year. That service closed down in June.
HP initially launched this service in other Asia-Pacific markets last month.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Bangladesh forms new police unit for protection of tourists
"Bangladesh has formed a new police unit to ensure more protection for local and foreign tourists and tourism spots in the South Asian country, a senior spokesman of Bangladesh Police said on Sunday.
'We've formed the new unit -- Tourist Police -- to ensure foolproof security of all local and foreign tourists in the country,' Assistant Inspector General of Bangladesh Police Md Nazrul Islam told Xinhua on Sunday.
He said the newly formed Tourist Police unit, which started its journey on Sunday from the country's southeastern Cox's Bazar Sea Beach, some 391 km away of capital city Dhaka, will expand its network to other tourist spots.
Side by side ensuring security, Islam said the police unit has also been assigned for conducting rescue operations.
Another main task for this particular unit is to look after the nature and wildlife in the tourist spots, he said, adding 'We hope that the foundation of the unit will help restore more confidence among local and foreign tourists regarding safety and security.'
According to statistics of the country's National Tourism Authority (NTA), a total of 349,837 foreign tourists visited Bangladesh in 2008, about 21 percent higher than that in 2007.
Despite the rise in number of tourists' visits, the incomes from the tourism sector in 2008 came down to 4. 60 billion taka (about 65.7 million U.S. dollars) in 2008 from 5.27 billion taka (about 75.3 million U.S. dollars) in 2007, the NTA figure showed.
The lack of adequate security and poor infrastructure were largely blamed for lower tourist arrivals in the country's many remote tourism spots, which officials said virtually prompted the authorities to create the new unit."
'We've formed the new unit -- Tourist Police -- to ensure foolproof security of all local and foreign tourists in the country,' Assistant Inspector General of Bangladesh Police Md Nazrul Islam told Xinhua on Sunday.
He said the newly formed Tourist Police unit, which started its journey on Sunday from the country's southeastern Cox's Bazar Sea Beach, some 391 km away of capital city Dhaka, will expand its network to other tourist spots.
Side by side ensuring security, Islam said the police unit has also been assigned for conducting rescue operations.
Another main task for this particular unit is to look after the nature and wildlife in the tourist spots, he said, adding 'We hope that the foundation of the unit will help restore more confidence among local and foreign tourists regarding safety and security.'
According to statistics of the country's National Tourism Authority (NTA), a total of 349,837 foreign tourists visited Bangladesh in 2008, about 21 percent higher than that in 2007.
Despite the rise in number of tourists' visits, the incomes from the tourism sector in 2008 came down to 4. 60 billion taka (about 65.7 million U.S. dollars) in 2008 from 5.27 billion taka (about 75.3 million U.S. dollars) in 2007, the NTA figure showed.
The lack of adequate security and poor infrastructure were largely blamed for lower tourist arrivals in the country's many remote tourism spots, which officials said virtually prompted the authorities to create the new unit."
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