The new guidelines issued by the Financial Institutions Division for incentive bonuses of state-owned banks and financial institutions are driven as much by the aim of linking rewards to actual performance as by the broader need to bring discipline and accountability to a troubled sector. For a lon
The persistent challenge of elevating revenue collection remains the central economic puzzle that Bangladesh has attempted to solve for many years. From enacting a new income tax law in 2023 to expanding and reorganising both the Income Tax wing and the Customs and VAT wing, the government has intr
The size of the investment that the formal lending institutions, that is, banks, have already made or are willing to make in a particular sector of the economy is indicative of the particular sector's importance in the economy. From that perspective, the blue economy does not seem to play a substan
That Bangladesh's agro-processing industry remains mired in layers of regulatory hurdles is no secret. The sector, despite its immense potential to drive export growth, rural employment, and value addition to agricultural produce, continues to struggle with a host of compliance challenges. Exporter
At a time when a high-level United Nations (UN) team arrives in Dhaka to discuss Bangladesh's progress for graduation from its least developed country (LDC) status to a developing nation, Japan brings off a tariff reform allowing continuation of the generalised system of preference (GSP) for the ne
One of the conditions Bangladesh was to meet for utilising the multilateral lender IMF's US$4.7 billion loan package has been improvement in the country's tax-to-GDP ratio, one of the lowest in the world. Currently, the ratio is 6.6 per cent, which the IMF wants to be raised to 8.4 per cent within
The dichotomy between the prospect of artificial intelligence (AI) and human resources could not be sharper anywhere save Bangladesh. Given the option for going whole hog for exploring AI prospect, should the country take the chance? Or, can the country afford the luxury of promoting AI at any cost
The latest Bangladesh Bank analysis of inflation may explain why a stable exchange rate has largely failed to translate into lower consumer prices and why a tight monetary policy has so far failed to bring inflation rate down to the desired level. The central bank's analysis reveals that the countr
A sudden swing from officially reported positive asset values to a declaration of deeply negative net worth is no routine accounting adjustment. Yet the speed with which this emerged during the merger of the five troubled Islamic banks has raised serious concerns about the credibility of financial
Though recovery of money and other assets laundered out of the country by those in power during the tenure of the ousted autocracy and their crony oligarchs was declared a priority by the interim government, yet, it has proved to be a very complex and audacious task. Despite efforts by the differen
