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.
Ever since Sri Lanka and Pakistan’s economic turmoil, Bangladesh’s foreign exchange reserves has become a part of public discourse. So much so that despite having an official figure from the central bank every week, people are speculating.
What does one do when one sees wrongdoing taking place in front of one’s very eyes? For most, the natural response would be to stop it in its tracks.
Grey area. The place between black and white -- and that is where life happens. This begs the question: shouldn’t the government’s communication be clear and concise for events that might fall in the grey area?
A hidden gem is what British banking giant HSBC dubbed Bangladesh's bourse earlier last month.
Often touted as the backbone of an economy, Bangladesh has never wholeheartedly nurtured the cottage, micro, small and medium enterprises sector like the governments around the world, particularly those of China, India, the UK, the US.
Don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs -- suggests the famous Greek storyteller Aesop. And looking at Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal’s proposed tax measures for the mobile financial services operators for the incoming fiscal year, one cannot help but recall the famous fable.
The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission’s move on Sunday to fix the broadband prices brings to mind an oft-used quote by celebrated French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: A goal without a plan is nothing but a wish.
He set off to save lives and livelihoods in his third budget as the finance minister and his second amid the global coronavirus pandemic, and along the way, went astray.
We are sailing through the most extraordinary times in living memory, with every facet of what we knew as normal life upended. So, one would expect the man heading the Bangladesh arm of a multinational behemoth like Unilever to be fidgety.
Any finance minister delivering a national budget wants, ideally, to project three qualities: calm, authority and very slight dullness.
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.
