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 interim government's amendment of the labour law, despite objections raised by business groups during the draft stage, has triggered fresh protests demanding its withdrawal. Opponents argue that some key provisions deviate from the understandings reached earlier in tripartite meetings involving
Bangladesh's drive to build a substantial stock of rice to meet any contingency appears, on the face of it, to be quite logical. When the market is jittery despite a highly satisfactory boro--- the number one grain--- harvest, the government allowed 242 private traders to import rice. Now that Asia
The customs bond facility allows export-oriented industries to import raw materials and intermediate goods duty-free. The condition is that the raw materials and intermediate goods thus imported have to be stored in bonded warehouses and not diverted to the domestic market and that the goods made f
The multiple indicator cluster survey (MICS) carried out by the Bangladesh Bureau of statistics (BBS) has presented an alarming picture of child labour and various negative aspects related to it. As high as 9.2 per cent children in the age bracket of 5-17 are compelled to perform tasks requiring ph
That all is not well with the state of Bangladesh's economy is corroborated by several recently published local and international studies. Even though the government managed to stabilise the economy to a large extent from the mess it inherited, prolonged political uncertainty appears to be a major
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
