Desk Report: The finance ministry has allocated Tk 89.67 crore to the state-owned Steel and Engineering Corporation for payment of installment for 30 per cent of shares in the Bangladesh Honda Private Limited, a Bangladesh-Japan joint venture company, reports The New Age.
Narayan Chandra Debnath, a director of the steel corporation, on Saturday told New Age that the corporation required paying a total of Tk 204 crore for the shares owned by the corporation in BD Honda.
He said that the corporation would pay the first installment by Tk 89 crore released by the finance ministry last week.
The budgetary allocation was given as loan on five per cent interest with a maturity period of 20 years with a five-year grace period.
The industries ministry sought the fund to the finance ministry after Honda Ltd of Japan, owning 70 per cent of the shares of BD Honda, decided to run a full-fledged manufacturing plant in Munshinganj with around $60 million investment.
Currently, BD Honda is assembling motorcycles at a rented factory in Sreepur, Gazipur which was set up with an investment of Tk 58 crore in 2013. Finance ministry officials said finance minister AMA Muhith was initially reluctant to allocate the fund forcing the steel corporation to look for loan from overseas sources.
But the insistence by industries minister Amir Hossain Amu forced the finance minister to allocate the fund on September 11, they said.
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