The commerce ministry has suggested that Alesha Mart, a crisis-ridden e-commerce platform, apply to the Bangladesh Bank (BB) directly for a working-capital loan as there is no way the ministry can provide such capital.
Recently, the ministry has sent its reply to Alesha Mart Chairman Md Monzur Alam Sikder as the e-commerce platform had sought a government bailout package earlier on December 05 to resume its operations and pay back the customers' money.
It requested the ministry to arrange for them a loan of Tk 3.0 billion as working capital.
Mr Sikder assured the government of giving necessary collateral, including a land mortgage of 3,000 decimal, against the loan.
"We're confident of solving the unforeseen problem efficiently," he said in the proposal.
In this regard, commerce ministry Additional Secretary AHM Shafiquzzaman, who heads the Digital Commerce Cell of the ministry, said, "It's a central bank issue."
In the proposal, Mr Sikder informed the ministry that the company had invested most of its funds to build capacity and argued that it now needed the working capital for optimum utilisation of the capacity.
He claimed that Alesha Mart would be the fastest growing e-commerce platform in South Asia, with its transactions reaching more than Tk 14 billion in only six months, and said the company wanted to be the market leader within 2030.
According to Alesha Mart, currently it has 50,000 employees, 1.3 million app users and 0.8 million orders per month.
The company's bank account has been blocked by the authorities concerned.
Presently, it has a balance of only Tk 20 million in the account, according to the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU).
It has already withdrawn around Tk 19.99 billion out of Tk 20.01 billion deposited by the clients. In the proposal for the working capital, the company chairman also assured that all of their clients would get their money back by next January.
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