Welcome to Dhaka International Trade Fair 2013

Welcome to Dhaka International Trade Fair 2013
Faizul Khan Tanim writes an overview of DITF 2013

The whole of Dhaka city waits eagerly for this month-long Dhaka international trade fair (DITF) in the begining of each year. Every year the residents expects to be part of something exciting and magnetic and even if every year is not a let down, but this 18th installment could not surprise the audiences as well.
Sprawling over an almost 12.5 lakh square feet venue with a  total of 505 stalls from both home and abroad participating, the entrepreneurs are more or less failing to address the concept of ‘variety’ and ‘appeal’, alleges the viewers thronging this fair. They say there is huge potential if the vastness of venue land is considered, the only thing lacking is creativity.

A 35 year old Banker Mahmudur Rahman from Dhanmondi said, “It seems i came to the same fair as last year, only with minor modifications here and there. The reason i bring my family is to spend some quality time together but there is hardly any stalls dedicated to just children except the Tonatuni stall. They too could have made it more child friendly with decor, bring clowns or magicians to entertain children or have story book reading sessions just to spice things up a bit.”

Another business woman Shirin Haider (40) alleged that there are just too many beggars this time. “Our road intersections and traffic signals are just full of them, can we not have them inside an international exposition like DITF? And when i complained this to a member of the law enforcement, his reply was: we are short in manpower sister.”

Although these problems prevail, but the holidays are bringing a fortune for the DITF organizers with almost 100,000 and even more visitors congregating at the venue in Sher-e-Bangla Nagar in Dhaka.

And the stalls which caught the most amount of attention are food junctions like Rich, Bengal Meat, Bellissimo where the most is happening. Bellissimo is the newest sensation in town where the following words are accumulating and bursting in to flavours for both the little ones and the elderly non-diabetic generation as well - icecream, chocolaty, sinful, delightful, buttery, almonds, mint – they have done it all. “Its a premium icecream brand of Bangladesh, with all our raw materials imported from Denmark and all set to kickstart our ventures in the country”, said Salim Ahmed Khan, regional sales manager, Kazi Food Industries Ltd. Speaking to few children and their parents from in front of Bellissimo stall bout this brand’s specialty, they smilingly said: Oh well this icecream is so good that even the winter chill cannot keep us away from.

The other food outlets like Bengal Meat with their beef and chicken burgers, hot dogs and other products are doing fantastic as well, not with their quality only but their affordable price as well. They too have very busy days and most visitors are saying that: in the past fairs, the other food stalls did have burgers and fastfood but of very cheap quality. One bite of Bengal Meat’s patty will tell you the difference and you will not go for the sub-standard snacks of ridiculous bills anymore.

And a lot of visitors were seen thronging to the stalls of Konka and Walton and this will only prove fierce competition for well-known brands like Sony and Samsung outside DITF. The price of Walton Android smart phone is just a little over Taka 7,000 and the picture quality of Konka LCD and LED Televisions are spellbinding and they too are priced lower than the major brands of the industry. And with the advent of technology and the arrival of other companies with their Blu-Ray players, high definition home entertainment will now not only be for the rich and famous, exclaimed a lot of the visitors from these mega pavillions.

The stall Shataranchi is doing well as usual and few finished leather goods stalls like Leather Cave, Majestic Footwear selling artificial leather products are doing very well as well. Most visitors are making impressive remarks about the new designs of leather jackets and bags of the Leather Cave pavillion. Their products too are priced very affordably.

For the last couple of years, an attractive, not to mention creative service has been highly popular in the DITF where customers can have sketches and portraits of themselves drawn right in front of them by talented artists. They appear quite lifelike and have generated a lot of buzz and are highly popular.

The Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) and the commerce ministry are jointly organizing this mega event that will continue till January 31. And although the past events saw huge traffic congestions in front of all the gates of the fair but surprisingly, this problem was addressed this year and the management are a lot careful this year while addressing these issues. However, on the downside, traffic on the other roads of the city became somehwhat unbearably congested due to the fair, from the number of cars and other vehicles travelling to and from the fair. But this year, the traffic the fair parking area was efficiently controlled. Not only that, a special stall has been installed inside the fair to facilitate mothers with their babies and the on-duty police personnel said they are more alert this year to catch the pickpocketers, groups of absconders which created huge turmoil last year.

*This article was first published in The Independent Weekend Magazine - http://theindependentdigital.com/index.php?opt=view&page=31&date=2013-01-25