The stability of Bangladesh’s banking sector is under serious threat, and it’s no longer an abstract issue confined to industry insiders or economists.
Due to my long association with the tea industry, friends often ask me: if tea gardens are not profitable, why do so many people want to own them? More importantly, who skims the milk in our tea value chain?
Despite having spent more than three decades in the financial sector, I faced the real test as a credit officer when I was appointed head of restructuring and recovery at Standard Chartered Bank. This was particularly so during audit, portfolio review and due diligence assignments following the Asian financial meltdown in 1997, in East Africa, Greater China and Europe.
The future of healthcare in Bangladesh depends on whether we can move beyond words and take real action.
The interim government has presented its first national budget, possibly the last under this setup.
Bangladesh is at a traction point in its technology transformation journey, having started later than many global counterparts.
Globally, the financial sector has become a prime target for cybercrime, with attacks growing in scale, sophistication, and impact. In 2025, several high-profile breaches exposed vulnerabilities even within well-established institutions.
Modern, reliable, technologically advanced banks might be the engines for Bangladesh's next development boom.
Thanks to our entrepreneurs, a few dynamic policy planners, mostly docile and hard-working workers, Bangladesh’s private sector has expanded rapidly and became a crucial driver of economic growth.
Until mid-2010 I was not aware that the immediate past prime minister had a special assistant for stolen asset recovery.
A new governor has joined the central bank of Bangladesh. As a leading macroeconomist, he has rightly identified inflation and the lack of discipline in the banking sector as the main culprits to be addressed. Both issues are very important, there’s no doubt about it.
We have been talking about banking sector reforms since long as our banking sector is plagued with insider lending, bad loans, low capitalisation and risk coverage, weak governance, sub-optimal automation, a lack of expert manpower and non-availability of better products to serve the emerging clients and cater their shifting demands.
Bangladesh witnessed a threefold rise in human outflow over the past decade. Yet, remittance inflow has experienced relatively poor growth, rising from $15 billion to a maximum of $24 billion.
Decision makers need to be very cautious regarding who they put up to dispassionately clear the mess.
My friend who is an apparel exporter received a call from his Spanish buyer over the weekend.
Backed by experience and good judgement, Gen Z ideas are worthwhile investments.
Free trade agreements (FTA) are made between countries to lower trade barriers through little to zero government tariffs or subsidies and other means.
China is the largest exporting and second-largest importing country in the world. The Chinese domestic market is also expanding fast with increasing consumerism and brand popularity. Yet Bangladesh’s export to China is dropping despite signing the tariff waiver for many “Made in Bangladesh” products.
