It takes only three months for a business to get electricity connection in Ethiopia, while it takes one year in Bangladesh. Bangladesh takes four times more than Ethiopia to register a property, or double the time to complete documentations for cross-border trading. Investors are taking notice of

Bangladesh is at an interesting juncture. The economy has seen robust growth in recent years. At this point, it is also imperative to draw up a blue-print for a long-term economic vision. If Bangladesh wants to grow its economy from the current ~$250 billion to $600 billion by 2025, it would have

The Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) has more listed companies than emerging markets like Russia, Mexico or Egypt, or the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) markets like Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait. It is at par with Brazil, another emerging market. Let us look specifically at the Top-200 listed companies

Forty years ago, the competition for the global business market was amongst US, European and Japanese companies. Then the tiger-economies joined the fray; and by 2000, several emerging markets also jumped in. As the competitive intensity rose with so many suppliers, demand took a hit after 2008. Th

The Bangladeshi Taka fell a sheer 7.0 per cent against the US Dollar during calendar year 2017 after being range-bound for three years. Economists say the recent import of grains, as successive floods spoilt domestic output, was the prime reason for the weakening of the domestic currency. But what

The rural consumption opportunity (including the non-metro towns) has been a common topic of discussion in several investor conferences recently. Why the rural people buy as they do, and how they behave for buying, are questions that on-ground observations can help understand better. Using my ow