Monday, July 10 2006 16:01 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Dhaka: Bangladesh has virtually shut the door on the $3 billion investment by the Tata group, telling the Indian investor that the situation may be too volatile in this election year for the deal to materialise.

While the government is citing non-cooperation by the opposition as the stumbling block, the Indian industrial giant is pressing for a final decision, BDNews news agency said.

"Time is running out and we won't wait for long," Alan Rosling, who led the Tata team for talks with three ministers here, told reporters.

He urged the Bangladesh government to decide fast, saying "this is a win-win proposal", the Bangladesh Observer newspaper reported.

The group plans to invest in fertiliser plants and has proposed gas-based industries.

But the ministers expressed helplessness.

"All of us in the government and myself feel strongly that it is good for Bangladesh, but it is also difficult to take any decision before the coming election," Industries Minister Motiur Rahman Nizami said after the meeting with the Tata delegation.

The coming election has made it difficult to accept a $3 billion investment proposal by Indian giant Tata, even though the deal is good for the country, Nizami said.

Nizami, chief of the Jamaat-e-Islami, a coalition partner in the Zia government, is locked in a political impasse with the opposition that has boycotted crucial talks on electoral reforms because it says Jamaat had opposed the country's freedom movement and has harboured "war criminals".

Admitting elections were a factor, Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, cooperatives minister and secretary general of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party, said the government needed 'the opposition's view on the Tata's investment proposal'.

"This is a complicated issue and needs further time to take final decision," Bhuiyan was quoted by the newspaper as telling the media at his office.

Finance and Planning Minister M. Saifur Rahman also admitted political sensitivities for not taking a decision on Tata's investment proposal.