Shipping corporation to purchase 2 bulk carriers

Bangladesh Shipping Corporation (BSC) is finally going to add two new ships to its fleet after a wait of almost seven years.

On Tuesday, the cabinet committee on government purchase approved the purchase of two bulk carriers, each having a carrying capacity of 63,500 deadweight tonnage (DWT).

The purchase would be made from US-based firm Hellenic Dry Bulk Ventures LLC at $76.69 million, equivalent to Tk 935.71 crore.

The state-owned shipping company is expecting to sign a contract with the US supplier within this month.

The two ships are now being constructed at Nanyang Shipyard in China and are expected to be available by November.

This is the first time that the BSC is spending its own fund for such a purchase.

At present, the BSC owns five vessels -- two bulk carriers and three chemical and oil tankers.

The BSC floated an international tender under open tender method on June 4 for purchasing two bulk carriers. A total of eight tender schedules were sold.

The bid submission deadline was July 16 and the BSC got three offers from two US suppliers and an India-Singapore joint venture firm.

The BSC sources said the two US suppliers Hellenic Dry Bulk Ventures LLC and Norvik Energy Navigation LLC met all the requirements and specifications.

The tender process was under the single-stage two-envelope bidding procedure, which involves bidders submitting two separate sealed envelopes simultaneously.

One envelope contains the technical proposal, and the other the financial proposal. Initially, only the technical proposals are opened and evaluated. If a bidder's technical proposal meets the requirements, their financial proposal is then opened and evaluated.

A technical team of the BSC led by its managing director visited the shipyards in China last month to conduct the technical evaluation.

"Ultimately, after technical and financial evaluation, Hellenic Dry Bulk Ventures LLC's proposed price per ship was $38.349 million," read a BSC press release.

This was 4.60 percent lower than the official estimated price, it said.

BSC Managing Director Commodore Mahmudul Malek said there is often a concern about possible US sanctions on ships made in China. But if the supplier of a vessel made in China is a US company, there is no such concern, he said.

Malek said they took the decision of purchasing the under-construction ships aiming at getting the delivery within a short period.

"If we place an order with any shipbuilder, it takes two to three years or more to complete the purchase process and build a ship," he said.

Mentioning that almost 90 percent of the ships have already been constructed, Malek hoped for the first ship to be delivered by next month while the second by November.

The government has a plan to buy three more ships, including two bulk carriers and a medium range oil tanker for the BSC by this December.

The government decided to provide a loan to the BSC for the purchase of those three vessels.

The BSC managing director said the Infrastructure Investment Facilitation Company (IIFC) under Economic Relations Division has been given the task to conduct a feasibility study and prepare a draft development project proposal for the purchase of the three ships.

The report would be finalised soon and is expected to be submitted to the ministry by next month, he added.

After selling off aged and unfit vessels, the BSC fleet was reduced to just two ships by 2018.

In 2018 and 2019, six new vessels were acquired with Chinese government financing worth over Tk 1,500 crore.

However, MV Banglar Samriddhi, one of those six ships, was abandoned after a Russian rocket attack at Ukraine's Olvia port in March 2022.

In October 2024, two ageing oil tankers, MT Banglar Sourav and MT Banglar Jyoti, were severely damaged in fires and subsequently scrapped for Tk 55 crore, leaving five ships in the fleet.