Selim Raihan
Dr Selim Raihan is professor, Department of Economics, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, and executive director, South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (Sanem). Email: selim.raihan@econdu.ac.bd
Dr Selim Raihan is professor, Department of Economics, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, and executive director, South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (Sanem). Email: selim.raihan@econdu.ac.bd
Urban poverty has seen a rise between the pre-Covid time and now, serving a debilitating blow to the food security of urban populace.
Despite moderate performance in several SDGs, Bangladesh faces major challenges in actually achieving them.
To overcome the economic crisis, no doubt, the country needs strong economic leadership, backed by strong political will.
Bangladesh is now in the depths of both economic and political crises.
There are some big concerns we must address given the possibility of the political tension permeating our economic domain.
The soaring food prices, coupled with falling real income, pose a serious challenge for the poor in terms of accessing adequate and nutritious food.
Inflation in Bangladesh has reached its highest level in a decade and has been a persistent problem for more than 18 months, starting from early last year.
Bangladesh’s progress towards switching to renewable energy has remained slow and uncertain.
The current global political, economic and trade situations are not favourable for a developing country like Bangladesh.
The national budget for the next fiscal year will be the third since the start of the Covid-19 crisis in March 2020. Can we expect it to address the current realities, contexts and challenges of Bangladesh?
Do the official inflation figures in Bangladesh reflect the actual inflation faced by the economically marginalised households in the country?
As we continue to celebrate 50 years of Bangladesh’s independence, there is a need for an elaborate discussion about the development challenges we are about to face in the days to come. Bangladesh’s development challenges are associated with its larger development goals.
Seeing the varying degrees of Covid that the world has experienced over the last one and a half years, we can safely assume that this pandemic is here to stay.
In Bangladesh, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have heterogeneous characteristics, which are evident from their diverse business activities. However, the discussion on SMEs has a fundamental problem related to the definition and scope.
Around a year and a half have passed since the onset of the Covid crisis.
This year’s national budget will be the second to be implemented amid the ongoing unprecedented economic and social crisis brought on by Covid-19.
In Bangladesh, despite the gradual rise in the investment-GDP ratio over the past three decades, private sector investment, in proportion to GDP, had remained stagnant for years even before the onset of Covid-19. The Covid-19 crisis intensified the problem.
Covid-19 deeply affected the labour market in Bangladesh. It intensified some of the existing challenges and brought about a new set of problems. A large number of people either lost employment or income and many are also experiencing intense job insecurity and uncertainty.