Bangladesh Mig-29's

rock45

Active member
Does anybody have updated info on Bangladesh's Mig-29s purchased in 1998? According to Scramble all the Fulcrums are grounded just wanted to know if this changed? Former Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina will stand trial on charges of receiving kickbacks in the purchase of Russian-built Mig-29 combat aircraft when she was in office in February 1999. Seems like a very poor country was Pakistan or another country threatening them, why the need for Fulcrums?

Story I found
http://www.hindustantimes.com/Story...ID=4577&Headline=Sheikh+Hasina+to+stand+trial

Scramble link to their air force
http://www.scramble.nl/bd.htm
 
It always surprises me that governments buy these weapons yet can hold a begging bowl to feed it's people
 
Other too

In Africa their are countries that have bought Flankers and Fulcrums too instead of food or medical supplies. A good rule of thumb is double the cost of the aircraft price for a years operational cost. Western fighters because of their higher prices are closer to triple the cost of the aircraft. It's less if the jet stays in the hanger and is never used but overall semi modern fighters are big money items maintenance and up keep wise. In Scramble it listed that: Bangladesh is at the receiving end of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers where they pour into the Bay of Bengal. Fifty-four rivers flow into the country making it the largest deltaic region in the world. The disastrous river floods of 1987 and 1988 inundated 40 and 60% of the country, respectively.
I can't even imagine what 54 rivers look like running into a mid or small size country. I would think military wise an inner navy would be more helpful then Mig-29s. Can somebody tell me who might Bangladesh's enemies be just so understand the region a little better. Myanmar next store also bought Mig-29s and a bunch of older Chinese attack jets A-5, much of aren't flying because of poor construction. They seemed displeased with the Chinese made aircraft bought in the past. Thanks
 
It always surprises me that governments buy these weapons yet can hold a begging bowl to feed it's people

Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Syria, North Korea, Burma, Sudan.... and countless other countries where people's lives aint matter. But weapons matter and therefore they waste their money on weapons.
 
My concern

I heard despite being a begging bowl by itself and keeping billions of its own population half hungry, half sanitized, and half educated India is buying Fulcrum, Sukui, Nukes, Missiles, PKAF etc. They even going for nuke powered subs whereas one sub could feed 1 million of its starving people for a year. What a shame...
 
Seems like a very poor country was Pakistan or another country threatening them, why the need for Fulcrums? http://
Military power causes respect. The US recognized the former Soviet Republics that had Nukes before they recognized the others. Bangladesh is a Moslem country surrounded by a Hindu one.
 
I heard despite being a begging bowl by itself and keeping billions of its own population half hungry, half sanitized, and half educated India is buying Fulcrum, Sukui, Nukes, Missiles, PKAF etc. They even going for nuke powered subs whereas one sub could feed 1 million of its starving people for a year. What a shame...

Hi iajdani,

Every Country needs to Evaluate the threats to their country and decide how best they can spend money on public infracture and defence .... India spends less that 3% of it's total GDP on Defense which is moderate by most standard as compared to it's neighbors most of whome are standing above 4 to 5 % of their GDP.

We need to take into consideration the level of threats a country has , the point everyone was trying to make is at the moment Bangladesh has no knows Military threat . Where as if you compare that with India , Even a small delay in deference procurements in the past had triggers it's Neighbours Pakistan to attack sighting opportunity .

1 Sub cannot feed Millions , a Government cannot start throwing money towards the Poor .. .. Poverty eradication is a panefully slow process the only thing government can do is increase it's spending and invent in infracture projects that would create more jobs ....... Simply saying the 10 million spend on a Sub should have been distributed among the poor would not have helped a little bit ...... in the long run it would end up pretty much like Zimbabwe with 231 million per cent Inflation ...:roll:

zimbabwe-cash-inflation.jpg


And you would end up like this guy going to buy a Burger


iajdani You need to understand different countries have different aspirations and situations and most times can't be compared to each other .

Btw: You Dugg a 3 years old thread .. we all had buried this deep under :mrgreen:


Peace
-=SF_13=-
 
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I heard despite being a begging bowl by itself and keeping billions of its own population half hungry, half sanitized, and half educated India is buying Fulcrum, Sukui, Nukes, Missiles, PKAF etc. They even going for nuke powered subs whereas one sub could feed 1 million of its starving people for a year. What a shame...

Keeping 'billions' of its own people half hungry .......The world has 6 billion and india has 1.1 billion. Not sure if billions is the right word in ur statement. Millions is more accurate.
Anywayz, allow me to present you some statistics: only 4-5 percent of india's population pays taxes every year. Feeding all people based on that money alone is not feasible. Lets look at two scenarios,
1) India spends all its monies on feeding hungry people. India eradicates poverty. But then India would be the next tibet. It would fall to external threat. Invasion would be almost imminent with not enough deterrence. ever since her independence India has been under constant threat.
2) India prioritizes its goals spends enough on defense sector to avoid occupation and then sets out on a long journey to rise the poeple above poverty line. Eradicating such collosal amounts of poverty takes time. India is very well placed in terms of annual GDP. That would not have been achieved if the literacy and poverty statistics were on the similar proportions as they were some 50 years ago.
If like u said India was shameless in spending all its monies on defense alone, India would have had more equipment that what it currently has. she is making procurements to protect its frontier. If it was not for those unfriendly neighbours, she would have never brought such state of the art equipment. If anyone is to be pointed at, it should be failed state next to us and not us.
 
Im actually under the impression the the Bangladeshi people seem to like India because India helped them with their sucession from Pakistan.

Thats just my opinion, I used to have a Bangladeshi friend and his parents and most of his family were Pro-India.
 
Im actually under the impression the the Bangladeshi people seem to like India because India helped them with their sucession from Pakistan.

Thats just my opinion, I used to have a Bangladeshi friend and his parents and most of his family were Pro-India.

Only an average Bangla is friendly to India. Almost everyone who is into politics or connected to big people are not pro india. A lot of defense equipment is supplied by china. The trouble between India and Bangal range from a petty quarrel of 'My ancestor crapped on this piece of land so this belongs to me" to high end issues like "being loyal to India's enemy".
 
I heard despite being a begging bowl by itself and keeping billions of its own population half hungry, half sanitized, and half educated India is buying Fulcrum, Sukui, Nukes, Missiles, PKAF etc. They even going for nuke powered subs whereas one sub could feed 1 million of its starving people for a year. What a shame...
where india begged u f****Ng moron ,dont hide under another flag u paki,u are the world largest begger and india not begging but gives billions of dollr to imf and world bank but u cannot run urs country a single day without urs masters help the usa and the newly aquired one china.good luck beggars.:read:
 
World Bank mulls investing in $11 bln India fund


(Reuters) - The World Bank is exploring whether to invest in an $11 billion debt fund the Indian government will roll out by next year as part of a massive push to its infrastructure sector, the bank's India head said.

Roberto Zagha said India was making progress in tackling procedural hassles that have held back faster infrastructure growth but a major roadblock to more private investment was a shortage of bankable projects.

The World Bank was likely to lend around $15 billion to $20 billion to India's infrastructure sector in the next five years. Typically the bank's lending to the sector ranges between 40-60 percent of the total annual lending.

The government has announced the $11 billion debt fund as a part of a series of recent measures to overhaul India's creaking infrastructure, which has long been seen as hobbling faster growth in Asia's third-largest economy. A similar fund is also under consideration for the power sector.

"It is being explored," Zagha said in an interview as part of the Reuters India Investment Summit, when asked whether the World Bank would contribute to the fund.

"Our role is not entirely clear, whether there is a need for finance from the bank, or whether there is a need for expertise from the bank," he added.

Pending legislation to give farmers a better deal in land acquisition would be a big step towards balancing development with social justice and help ease the implementation of infrastructure projects, he said.

The Indian government plans to double spending on infrastructure to $1 trillion in its next five-year plan, which runs from 2012-17.

"That's a statement of intent," said Zagha, referring to the spending target. "There's a sense of urgency in the government which I didn't see before. That's very encouraging."

There was at least $50 billion to $60 billion untapped investor potential in water and sewage treatment projects alone, he said.

"I don't think financing is an issue." he said. "The greatest challenge is bankable projects. Investors will come, financing will be found if you find ways of making projects which are commercially attractive and bankable."

The fiasco of New Delhi's preparations to host the Commonwealth Games has proved an embarrassment to the government and raised worries in some quarters, including the rating agency Moody's Analytics, that it could deter foreign investment.

"I don't think it matters," Zagha said, when asked whether the Games could hit investor sentiment. "But it does show the organisational issues that India has to deal with."

World Bank mulls investing in $11 bln India fund | Reuters​
 
Foreign players wary of India infrastructure risk


Foreign investment will play a secondary role in resolving India's infrastructure deficit in the near term given the complexity of completing projects, executives and officials told the Reuters India Investment Summit this week.

Power, for example, attracted $1.44 billion in foreign direct equity investment in the most recent financial year -- a pittance in the context of India's hopes for $350 billion to $400 billion of funding for power for the five years starting in 2012.

"I don't see any completely independent plants being set up by foreign companies," Bal Krishna Chaturvedi, the government Planning Commission's member in charge of energy and infrastructure, said in an interview for the Summit.

"The main entrepreneur continues to be Indian. This model we find is not a bad one because he knows the conditions here, he's able to handle it much better than a foreign partner," he said.

A lack of attractive opportunities and early-stage delays often deter investors from tying-up capital in long-term projects in India, prompting many instead to gain exposure by taking stakes in listed operators or investing through private equity.

The challenges to getting big projects completed were underscored by the chaotic preparations for the upcoming Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.

"India is competing for global capital. Even infrastructure in India has to compete for capital, so the government, Planning Commission, should remain mindful of that," Anoop Seth, co-head of Asian infrastructure at AMP Capital Investors, a unit of No. 2 Australian wealth manager AMP, told the Reuters Summit.

New Delhi is keen to increase foreign investment in projects as it targets a doubling in infrastructure spending to $1 trillion in the five years starting in 2012, half of which it hopes will be privately funded. Of a planned $11 billion infrastructure fund, half could be raised from overseas investors such as insurers and sovereign wealth funds.

The demand for capital is clear. India was by far the world's biggest market for project finance loans last year at $30 billion, according to data from Project Finance International, but funding was dominated by onshore lenders led by State Bank of India , which topped the global league table.

SLOWING

FDI Overall foreign direct investment in India fell by about 25 per cent in the year through July to $12.6 billion, even as FDI into China rose 21 per cent over the same period to $58.4 billion.

However, overseas funds are flooding into stocks at a record pace of $18 billion this year, driving a rally that highlights the preference many investors have for the liquidity and risk profile of listed assets in India.

Gautam Bhandari, a managing director at Morgan Stanley who heads the Wall Street bank's infrastructure fund in India, said work still needs to be done to streamline planning and permissioning to get projects to the construction stage.

"I think once that gets solved you'll get increased levels of FDI," he told the Reuters Summit.

India spends 6 per cent of its GDP on infrastructure, nearly half the 11 per cent invested by China. The shortfall is evident in the decrepit roads of Mumbai and frequent power cuts in large parts of a country whose economy is growing at 8.5 per cent.

A top official at the National Highways Authority of India, said in a Reuters Summit interview that foreign investors would probably fund up to 30 per cent of a planned $18 billion in road-building in the current financial year.

The entire construction sector, including roads and highways, attracted FDI equity in the fiscal year that ended in March of $2.86 billion, government figures show, and just $221 million in the first three months of the current year.

"I think the trend is going to be the same. There is not going to be much," G.V. Sanjay Reddy, vice chairman of infrastructure builder GVK Power & Infrastructure , said when asked during the Reuters Summit about foreign direct investment in infrastructure.

He said the technological gap that multinationals could bridge in the 1990s has largely been closed, and local players have the know-how to navigate a challenging environment.

Suneet Maheshwari, chief executive of L&T Infrastructure Finance Co, an arm of engineering conglomerate Larsen & Toubro Ltd , said foreign players who want to participate in Indian infrastructure should consider joint ventures.

"India's regulatory system -- we all expect it to behave like one country as if it's China, but it's actually more like Europe," he told the Summit. "The language changes every 500 kilometres, and the culture changes, and then you have even the law changing in certain states, or the way it is administered."

S Naren, chief investment officer for equities at ICICI Prudential Asset Management, said local knowledge is key. "More than FDI, I would say that it is private equity money which is entering the sector, because at the end of the day what is required is a local company to implement the project," he said.​
 
Canada likely to invest USD 3 bn in India's highways sector


Shifting its focus from the US and other European nations, Canada has assured India to invest USD three billion in highways projects in the next five years, Road Transport and Highways Minister Kamal Nath said.

"Earlier Canada was parking funds in western countries mostly the US, I sensitised them...they showed a lot of interest. Over a period of five years, I think we should have close to USD three billion," Nath said.

He said he had talked to a large number of funds there, including pension and insurance funds and they have evinced interest in the India's infrastructure sector.

"I am optimistic that we would see some interest from pension funds and insurance funds (from Canada) because those are the kinds of funds, which for the long term infrastructure funds are the most desirable," Nath said.

The move comes in the wake of India raising cap on foreign institutional investors (FIIs) investment by USD 5 billion in government and corporate bonds each. Besides, the government allowed FIIs to invest additional USD 5 billion in bonds issued by companies engaged in infrastructure sector.

The country needs about USD 70 billion for building roads in the next four years and Nath had earlier said that USD 40 billion requirement would be met from the private sector, of which USD 10 billion is likely to come from foreign funds.

The government plans to build 35,000 km of highways by March 2014.​
 
Foreigners to fund up to 30 pct of Indian roads


Foreign investors are likely to fund up to 30 percent of India's $18 billion road projects in the current fiscal year, a top official at the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) said on Monday.

J.N. Singh, member finance at the authority, said Asian and European companies were participating as minority stakeholders in road projects and the appetite was good.

NHAI, which builds, maintains and manages highways, has awarded contracts to build 3,000 kms of road between April and August and looks to award another 6,000 kms before the fiscal year ends next March, he told in an interview for the Reuters India Investment Summit.

"Companies from Spain, the UK, Italy, Saudi Arabia, China , Russia and Malaysia are actively participating in the BOT mode of the national highway development programme," Singh said, referring to Build-Operate-Transfer partnership models.

India needs to invest $80 billion in the next two years to revamp highways and is expecting the private sector to fund half of the project costs, Transport Minister Kamal Nath had told Reuters last week.

But underdeveloped domestic bond markets and restrictions on investments of pension and insurance funds ensure the country's infrastructure developers rely mainly upon overstretched banks, which provide only short-term funds.

The government has announced a series of measures to boost funding for infrastructure. Last week, New Delhi lifted the cap on foreign investment in the debt market to address the long-term capital requirements for the sector.

The move comes on the heels of a plan to set up an $11 billion debt fund by next year. There is also a proposal to allow India's top state-run infrastructure finance company, IIFCL , to guarantee all infrastructure bonds, helping generate long-term funds for the sector.

"The policy changes made by the government have been quite good and are likely to have a positive impact," Singh said.

He also said NHAI plans to raise up to 55 billion rupees ($1.2 billion) this year via tax-free and taxable bonds, adding the firm also has plans to tap overseas debt market in the next fiscal year.

Officials have said bureaucratic and regulatory hassles keep foreigners from jumping into the fray on their own, and tend to look for joint venture partners.

India is currently building 13 kms of roads a day against a stated target of 20 kms. Singh attributed the delay to a slow bidding process in the past and said the target could be achieved by 2012.

"It takes at least two years to complete road projects after the actual construction work begins. If you had awarded fewer projects earlier, how could you achieve the desired results today?"

India's infrastructure deficit acts as a brake on the economy and is seen a drag on achieving a growth pace similar to China's double-digit economic expansion. Poor infrastructure is also partly responsible for high inflation.

A Planning Commission report showed the country missed its target for power sector and road additions in the last fiscal year.​
 
India solicits US investment in infra for 9-10% growth rate


Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday solicited US investments in infrastructure to realise a sustained growth of 9 to 10 per cent over the next three decades.

"Our (India's) objective is to sustain a growth rate of 9-10 per cent per annum in the next three decades. And in that processthe help of the US is of enormous significance," he said while addressing a joint press conference with visiting US President Barack Obama.

The American companies, Singh said, are welcome to participate in the development of infrastructure sector. The investment requirement in the sector in the next five years has been estimated at $one trillion.

"We need American assistance by way of capital exports... India needs a investment of more than a trillion dollars in the next five years in its infrastructure development...We welcome American investment in our economy," Singh said.

India is likely to double the target for investment in infrastructure sector to $1 trillion during the Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012-17).

The country's economic growth rate slipped to 6.7 per cent in 2008-09 from over nine per cent because of the global financial meltdown.

The growth rate, however, picked up to 7.4 per cent in 2009-10 and is expected to record 8.5 per cent in the current fiscal.

The Prime Minister further said that economic growth was necessary to deal with the problem of poverty.

"Foremost concerns of the Indian polity is to grapple with the problem of Poverty which still afflicts millions of our citizen...for that we need a string resurgent robust rate of economic growth...and it is a growth rate which is within our reach," Singh added.​
 
Developing infra in India is US' top business priority


The US on Monday said infrastructure development in India is its top business priority and allayed concerns about protectionism in the American economy.

"Infrastructure is an important area and within that power generation, alternate energy... These all are areas where I believe the US companies can contribute," US Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade Francisco Sanchez told reporters on the sidelines of a CII conference here.

He also said the US is looking for opportunity to increase bilateral trade and investment opportunities with India.

India has emerged as an attractive global investment destination, and infrastructure sector alone requires investment of $514 billion for the 11th Five Year Plan (2007-08 to 2011-12). Almost 30 per cent of this investment is envisaged to come from private sources.

For the 12th Five Year plan (2012-13 to 2016-17), the investment in infrastructure is envisaged at $1 trillion.

On a query related to protectionism, the visiting official said: "The US has the most open market in the world and it will continue to be that."

Last month Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had asked the G-20 nations, which also include the US, to resist protectionism as it would retard the process of recovery.

In September, Ohio had banned outsourcing of the state IT contracts to foreign companies. This was preceded by Washington's decision to hike visa fee for H-1B and L1 categories.

Sanchez further said a level playing field has to be maintained to make sure that everybody who has a product or service to offer can have the opportunity to compete fairly, which would benefit everyone.

"We believe that we have to strengthen partnership with India and to have vibrant open market that encourage trade, direct investment and brings the best product and services," Sanchez said.​
 
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