Mushir Ahmed

One of the country's oldest industrial groups said it would invest some 350 million dollars (Tk24.15 billion) in infrastructure, tourism and textile in the country to boost growth and create jobs.

Salahuddin Kashem Khan said the "entire amount of the money" that his group earned by selling its stake in mobile phone company, AKTEL, would be reinvested in Bangladesh.

"This year we have planned to invest the money into infrastructure, tourism and textile sectors in the Chittagong region," said Khan, the head of the AK Khan group, whose names the Malaysia-owned mobile phone company AKTEL still bears.

AK Khan Group, a pioneer in Bangladeshi entrepreneurship, had 30 per cent stake in the then second largest mobile phone operator, majority owned by south-east Asian mobile phone giant Telekom Malaysia.

The company sold the stake to Japan's NTT DoCoMo for a whopping 350 million dollars in June last year in what is now called as the biggest selloff for a Bangladeshi company.

Analysts have described the sell-off as the deftest by a Bangladeshi entrepreneur, as the AK Khan sold the stake just before the growth in the country's mobile phone sector levelled off.

Chittagongian-owned Pacific Group also sold off its 45 per cent stake in its mobile phone company, CityCell, to SingTel in June 2005 for US$118 million.

But it is not known whether the Group, whose owners left for Singapore during the caretaker regime, has reinvested the money or brought it back home.

AK Khan Group chief said the company they have done some home-work and singled out power, logistics, hotel and textile for investment.

The company is looking for joint-venture to set up a large coal-based merchant power plant to tap into growing energy need in Chittagong industrial area.

"There is an acute crisis of gas and electricity in Chittagong. We are already holding talks with foriegn companies to set up power plants here," he said.

The caretaker government late last year allowed private companies to set up power plant under a new policy, provided the company has to find out its own clients.

Khan said his group has also selected a place to set up an inland container depot (ICD) as it sees Chittagong Port emerging as a big regional hub for trade and commerce in the near future.

"The ICD will be big and we will gradually increase its capacity, depending on containers' growth at the Chittagong Port," he said, without elaborating.

AK Khan has also planned to build a five-star hotel in the Chittagong, he said.

"We already have procured land to build the five star hotel. It will be the biggest in Chittagong and managed by a world-known hotel management group," he said.

"The market for a five-star hotel is still not big enough in Chittagong. But it will be within a very short time," he said.

Unlike Dhaka, which is home to at least four five-star hotels, Chittagong does not have any world-standard hotel catering to the need to the growing number of businesses in the country's second largesr city.

The company would inject a fraction of the amount to its 50-year-old textile factory, which was nationalised by the government immediately after the independence but handed back to the owners in the 1990s.

"We will modernise the factory with world-class machinery. Entire factory would be refurbished and relaunched," he said.