Ahsan Habib

Corporate and foreign investors may further lose interest in the stock market of Bangladesh as the country has dropped a notch in the Moody’s Investors Service rating system.

The story of Bangladesh’s economic growth is predicated on solid ground.

The stock market stakeholders have been demanding for widening the tax gap between listed and non-listed companies by lowering the corporate tax for listed companies in order to encourage more companies to go public.

The government proposed going for making the Baggage Rules 2016 stricter, lower the limit for the travellers in case of bringing in gold bar or gold pieces and impose higher taxes.

High corporate taxes on banks, non-bank financial institutions, merchant banks, insurance companies and telecommunication companies are not logical as their profit is not high compared to capital, said Shahidul Islam, chief executive officer of VIPB Asset Management Company.

Conventional lenders in Bangladesh fell behind shariah-based banks in 2022 in terms of profit growth mainly due to the lower interest rate regime.  

No bank in Bangladesh has ever made so much profit in a year

Sustaining the development that has taken place in Bangladesh in the past 14 years and curbing inequality are key major challenges facing the economy owing to the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war, said Planning Minister MA Mannan.

Shares of most of the insurance companies rose almost every day in the last one month, becoming an outlier in a market that has been dull for several months due largely to persisting economic uncertainty at home and abroad. 

While a number of banks and non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs) are struggling to rein in their non-performing loans (NPL), DBH Finance PLC has continued to maintain the lowest NPL to loan ratio in the industry for years. 

Bangladesh’s gross domestic product is estimated to have grown at a slower pace in the current financial year with the biggest blow stemming from the industrial sector, official figures showed.

Most of the Shariah-compliant banks in Bangladesh clocked higher profits in 2022 despite a fall in deposits and the unprecedented fund withdrawal by customers and liquidity crunch.  

The economy is estimated to have expanded at a slower-than-expected pace in 2022-23, said the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) yesterday, a figure that analysts describe as good in view of elevated inflation, slowing exports and remittances and the ongoing pressure on the country’s foreign exchange reserves.

The earnings of foreign banks operating in Bangladesh rocketed in 2022 buoyed by their incomes from the dealings of international currencies.

Four state-run commercial banks registered 29 per cent year-on-year spike in bad loans in 2022 as the central bank’s relaxed classification rules introduced in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak ended and their inefficient lending persisted. 

Profits of all power generation companies dropped in the July-March period of fiscal year 2022-23 and some of them even incurred huge losses mainly due to a huge depreciation of the value of the taka against the US dollar that ultimately increased their costs. 

Most of the listed pharmaceutical companies in Bangladesh logged lower profits despite higher sales in July-March of the current financial year owing to a spike in the cost of production. 

Uttara Finance Ltd is yet to take any major steps against the officials allegedly involved in the Tk 5,100 crore scam unearthed by the Bangladesh Bank although four months have passed since the central bank directed it to bring the culprits to the book.

Foreign investments in the Dhaka Stock Exchange have maintained a downward trend since 2018 despite the regulator’s efforts to retain existing investors and attract new ones.  

This year’s Eid-ul-Fitr has turned out to be yet another depressing festival for many stock investors as few could sell shares to meet the vacation’s shopping expenses amidst the presence of floor price.