DHAKA, July 10: India’s Tata Group on Monday announced suspension of all development activities on the proposed $3 billion projects in Bangladesh, due to the BD’s government’s go-slow policy over the investment talks. The company, however, said that it would resume the process once the conglomerate was invited to join conclusive talks.

“If the government of Bangladesh does not take a decision we can't wait. All the development activities on our proposed projects have been suspended,” Alan Roseling, executive director of the group holding company Tata Sons, told reporters after a meeting with the executive chairman of the Board of Investment, Mahmudur Rahman, on Monday.

The Tata official reiterated an earlier cautionary note that they might consider shifting of the planned projects to somewhere else if multilateral lending agencies, including World Bank and Asian Development Bank, want to finance similar projects in other places. “We are extremely disappointed and frustrated,” he added.

The Tata Group’s latest “tactical manoeuvring” of suspending development activities of the Bangladesh projects — not withdrawal of the projects — followed the expiry of a one-month timeframe it requested to the government for responding to its minimum offers submitted on April 30.

Alan Roseling made it clear that the group would revive the process of commissioning the four planned projects should this government or the next one take a “meaningful decision” as Bangladesh occupies strong position in the Tata’s future business strategy involving a global restructuring plan.

The investment board chief, too, expressed his disappointment at the delay in the Tata investment process because of the influence of the coterie interests but said the government would go ahead with the process and hopefully the Tata authorities would come back to invest here.

Accordingly, the secretarial-level committee would hold its final meeting on July 16 to prepare the review report on the Tata’s minimum offers, to be submitted to the national committee headed by the industries minister within the subsequent one week. The cabinet will then take a decision.

“We will prepare the final report safeguarding the long-term national interests and also supporting the Tata’s investment initiative so that the next government is not in trouble in bargaining over this issue,” Mahmud told the local press.

Gas pricing, fiscal incentives, method of coal mining and ownership of the planned Tata entities remain the contentious issues. Domestically, the Indian multinational has reportedly been facing a hostile competition with the Mittal Steel, which has already proposed setting up a 10 million ton steel plant in Orissa. The Tata’s proposed plant in Bangladesh is supposed to produce 2.4 million tons of steel annually, targeting the market of Bangladesh, India and the southeast Asia.

The Tata executive once again described the projects, inclusive of fertiliser and power plants and coalmine exploration, as good for the country and its people as well as for a healthy balance of payments, a macro-economic area in which Bangladesh suffers due to costs of higher imports.

He regretted that an economically ‘good proposal’ was overshadowed by political considerations. “We now understand that the government is only likely to take matters forward after the general elections scheduled for January 2007,” the Tata executive said.

The Tata officials were advised to wait further — even until the next general elections — when they met the finance and planning minister M Saifur Rahman, the LGRD and cooperatives minister, Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, the industries minister, Motiur Rahman Nizami, and the principal secretary to the prime minister’s office, Dr Kamal Uddin Siddiqui, on Sunday.