Vehicle manufacturing in Bangladesh
This news item was published in most dailies on 4th December. This will herald a very significant milestone in our engineering industry, initiated by the Nitol-Niloy Group in collaboration with Tata. We wish them the best of luck with the light trucks that they propose to start with. Technical people, and possibly all others, will appreciate if the progressive local manufacturing components are identified percentage wise in value over a projected time frame. The value addition for final assembly, and other usual local labour oriented input may also be shown separately.
In my opinion, value wise engine manufacture may possibly be at most around 30 percent of the engine value. Transmission may account for possibly 25 percent of the value of this component. Body and chassis, which is mostly press and stamping operation, may account for another say 25 percent at most. Components like battery, lights and other fixtures may represent some say 20 percent of all add-on fixture values.
My estimates may well be wrong, as I have left the engineering manufacturing sector around mid nineteen seventies. I am sure that most of the materials, like pig iron for casting, steel sheets for fabrication etc. will all be imported. How much of the engine components will be locally cast, machined and finished? The same applies for the transmission and differential components. It will be interesting if the manufacturers give this break up stage wise, so that we can see how much of it comes from Bangladesh.
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