Rejaul Karim Byron

The Covid-19 pandemic has reversed Bangladesh’s steady trend of poverty reduction which had continued over the past two decades, according to a new report of the World Bank.

Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal yesterday indicated that the government may consider reducing corporate tax rates for listed firms in the upcoming budget.

Economists have suggested that the government open a hotline service through which ultra-poor people facing food crisis during “lockdown” can communicate their sufferings and the government can take prompt steps to get food to them.

Solar home systems (SHS) saved Bangladesh $1,852 million while providing clean energy for the past 15 years since 2003, says a World Bank survey.

Despite taking aggressive measures to import rice in the last three months, the government has so far failed to replenish the country’s depleting grain stocks.

The International Monetary Fund has raised its projection for the economic growth of Bangladesh to 5 per cent for 2021, up from 4.4 per cent it forecast in October.

The prolonged closure of schools is causing an education crisis that may cost Bangladesh and other South Asian countries over $1 trillion in lost earnings in the long run, according to a World Bank report.

An intense and sustained vaccination campaign can play a pivotal role in Bangladesh’s future economic benefits up to more than 10 percent of its current GDP, according to a new report of the World Bank.

World Bank in its latest twice-a-year regional update has raised question whether remittance flow in the South Asian countries has really increased.

Bangladesh’s gross domestic product (GDP) may grow by as high as 5.6 per cent in the current fiscal year, subject to three factors, said the World Bank yesterday.

The World Bank has more than doubled its gross domestic product (GDP) growth prediction for Bangladesh for the current fiscal year as the economy shows signs of recovery.

The state coffer was empty after Bangladesh’s nine-month-long Liberation War. Poverty, hunger, natural disasters, famine, crumbling infrastructure, political turmoil, and coups in the first decade of Bangladesh’sinception did not paint a picture that would radiate hope.

Bangladesh needs to improve infrastructure and standard of education, equip the youth population with market-oriented skills and uproot corruption to become a high-income country, experts say.

The government yesterday approved the import of 50,000 tonnes of rice from India in order to increase the country’s food stock and control spiralling prices.

The government has increased the allocation for its Money for Work and Test Relief (TR) programmes by 81.25 percent for the current fiscal year to revitalise a pandemic-hit rural economy and provide money to people through development of rural infrastructure.

The government’s plan to use foreign exchange reserves to bankroll infrastructure projects may face difficulty in the current fiscal year as rising imports will leave little leeway for making such lending.

The implementation of the 44-kilometre Dhaka-Tongi-Joydebpur rail line under an Indian line of credit (LoC) has made progress of 31.2 per cent since its construction began 11 years ago.

An “in-house feasibility study” of Dhaka Power Distribution Company (DPDC) has come to the fore for all the wrong reasons, having cost a project an excess Tk 629 crore and four years’ delay.

In a first-ever move, the government is going to use €524.56 million from the ballooning foreign exchange reserves for a development project.

State lenders in Bangladesh are sometimes in the news for all the wrong reasons. But they also carry the weight of the fast-expanding economy.