Mahdi Amin, adviser to BNP acting chairperson Tarique Rahman, speaks to The Daily Star
Bangladesh Bank has opened a can of worms with its revision of the balance of payment data. There is no better way to put it.
Surely, the manner of Yunus’s sentencing does not add to the broader investor confidence in Bangladesh, and the data points already are not promising.
If there is one indicator that epitomises the government’s mismanagement of the economy in recent times, it is inflation -- which raced to an 11-year high of 9.94 percent in May.
Self-contradictory is what best describes Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal’s fifth budget, and the last of the Awami League-led government’s current term.
In 2019, when AHM Mustafa Kamal took charge as the finance minister, the Bangladesh economy was taxing for take-off for its long-haul flight to the developed country club.
This year was always supposed to be a celebration of Bangladesh’s economic progress with the opening of Padma bridge and Dhaka metro rail and 100 percent electrification.
It seems the universe keeps conspiring against Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal. When it is his moment to shine, some misfortune strikes. Last year, it was dengue, and this year, it is the raging coronavirus that has left him at the centre of what could possibly be Bangladesh’s most acute economic -- and human -- crisis yet.
Optimism is a disease, the polemical British-Indian novelist Salman Rushdie once said, and talking with Manmohan Parkash, the country director of the Asian Development Bank, one can’t help but catch that disease.
Age is the price of wisdom, it is often said. And an audience with the immediate past finance minister, AMA Muhith, calls to mind that saying.
Halfway through an interview at the Planning Commission, Planning Minister MA Mannan is asked about the logic behind the inordinate number of projects that are in implementation at any given moment.
The man with the plan, is the impression one walks away with after an audience with Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal. Later, one is invariably met with the question: was he being a little too optimistic and naive?
Gamechanger -- is what best describes the debut of Bangla Bond, a taka-denominated debt instrument, on the London Stock Exchange on November 11 for Bangladesh.
Much has been said about the tremendous growth momentum of the Bangladesh economy. It was amongst the fastest growing nations in the world in the past decade, as per data from the state-run Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics -- and the trend is expected to continue into the near future, too.
All great things start from small beginnings, it is often said. And Bangladesh’s eight-place leap forward in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business 2020 index can be viewed in this light.
In 2011, with great hope, Monwara Shameem had handed over her 8.25 decimals of land in Mohakhali DOHS to a reputed developer to construct a six-storied apartment building.
The template of nuclear family, in which the dad went to work and the mum stayed at home, is fast on its way out.
