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meen Health, an affiliate of Grameen Bank, has 51 clinics that offer low-cost treatment to villagers who pay an insurance premium of just $2 a year

Yunus says he is working with U.S. medical experts to create health care centers that allow villagers to transmit their medical information over the Internet using cellular telephones to a far-away doctor's computer. "He can see it on the screen and decide what the advice should be in this particular case and pick up the mobile phone and tell the health management center what is the next step to take, what precautions, whatever advice they have," he said.

One of his partners, Pfizer - the world's biggest pharmaceutical maker - is helping to evaluate Grameen's health care delivery systems. Another is General Electric, the world's top maker of medical imaging devices such as ultrasound machines. GE is working with villagers to make diagnostic equipment less complex and easier to carry to people's homes. And the Mayo Clinic, a leading nonprofit medical provider, is training village doctors and nurses how to use state of the art medical equipment.

The top three operators -- Grameenphone, Banglalink and AKTEL -- have withdrawn their Tk 0.25 special tariff. The three operators control more than 90 percent of the market, or 40.14 million customers. The total market size is 45.21 million customers.The mobile operators had previously charged Tk 0.25. Now they are charging a minimum of Tk 0.40 to Tk 0.49 per minute. Grameenphone and Banglalink have recently increased their 'start-up' prices to Tk 900, which ranged from Tk 450 to Tk 500 a month ago. "Bangladesh has the lowest call rates in the world, which means that return on investment takes a very long time. This is why most mobile operators today are still not profitable," Ahmed Abou Doma, chief executive officer and managing director of Banglalink, said yesterday.

Egypt-based Orascom Telecom's subsidiary Banglalink entered the market in 2005. Even after having the market's second largest customer base, the company is yet to enjoy profits mainly because they had to bear the huge subsidised connection costs.

Till December 2007, Aktel was churning profits. But after paying a big fine for conducting illegal VoIP (voice over internet protocol) operations, like other companies, Aktel started to incur losses from early 2008. However, among the top three players, only Grameenphone is now enjoying profits. But it has also revised its tariff plan to continue the trend.

The Indian delegation, headed by ICC president Sanjay Budhia, while meeting Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in Dhaka on Monday, expressed willingness to set up an SEZ there. For this, it has sought a suitable 150 acre plot in that country, wherein it may attract Indian investments worth $5 billion, suggested the chamber.

Direct investment from India could help Bangladesh reduce its trade deficit with India. Massive investments from Indian corporates, including prominent ICC members will create surplus capacity which would not only improve availability of manufactured goods and diversify its basket of goods for re-export to India, said ICC.

During its discussion with the Bangladesh authorities, the Indian delegation has pointed out that sectors like energy, power (both hydel and thermal), steel, communication, healthcare, fertiliser, oil & gas, limestone and forest-based industries like paper, export of plantation crops, spices, fruits, vegetables, flower, herbs and processed foods are some of the areas which can drive a stronger bilateral economic relations between the two countries.

Clothing manufacture underpins impoverished Bangladesh's industrial activity, accounting for 80 percent of overseas sales and pulling in 11 billion dollars a year.

At the start of Bangladesh's financial year in July, garment exports were up 72 percent from a year earlier, but by February growth had slowed to four percent year-on-year as orders from Western retailers evaporated.

"The whole economy can unravel if garment exports continue to slow down as many other sectors such as transport, services and construction are directly dependent on this sector," said Masato Miyazaki, an IMF adviser on Bangladesh.

 According to BB statistics, Bangladesh's remittance inflow grew24.43 percent to around 7.03 billion U.S. dollars in July-March period of the current fiscal year (July 2008-June 2009) despite a global recession that forces job cuts around the world.     Bangladesh's exports in the first eight months of the current fiscal year 2008-09 (July 2008-June 2009) posted 15.90 percent growth and stood at around 10.35 billion U.S. dollars.     The country's Letter of Credits (L/Cs) against imports worth 1.57 billion were settled in February over that of 1.999 billion U.S. dollars in January, according to the central bank provisional statistics.