Md Asaduz Zaman

The plan to construct metro rail in Chattogram has taken a step forward, as the government is set to approve a project to carry out preliminary feasibility study for the infrastructure.

Twelve private economic zones in Bangladesh have received good responses from investors drawing investment proposals involving $4.27 billion from local and foreign entrepreneurs in the past six years.

Nurseries across Bangladesh saw a massive drop in sales in the last four months due to the rising cost of living along with higher production costs and low rainfall.

The government is going to undertake a major project to set up five jetties and necessary infrastructure in the economic zones in the country’s south-eastern part to ensure the comfortable and safe movement of people and landing facilities and boost tourism.

One project is seeking higher allocation, one deadline extension and three are requesting both as the government is set to place seven projects at a meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec) tomorrow for approval.

Growth of Bangladesh’s factory output had slowed down last fiscal year of 2021-22, which analysts forecast was likely to prevail in the current fiscal year and could even be exacerbated by soaring prices, the global economic slowdown and ongoing gas and electricity crisis. 

Shrimp exports from Bangladesh fell in the first quarter of the current fiscal year due to weak demand in the EU and the US markets, which have been gripped by the fears of a coming recession amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.

Development spending in Bangladesh rose 36 per cent year-on-year in September despite the government’s efforts to cut expenditures in a bid to save US dollars.  

People in rural areas were hit harder by food and non-food inflation than those in urban areas over the last two months, with the overall inflation surging to a 10-year high of 9.52 percent in August.

The number of Bangladeshi workers who headed to the Middle East countries in search of jobs surged 177 per cent year-on-year in the first eight months of 2022, official figures showed.    

The production of jute textiles has fallen significantly over the past two years due to a drop in exports and the government’s failure to strictly impose the mandatory packaging law that led to decreased domestic demand, according to jute textile millers.

Revenue collection by the National Board of Revenue (NBR) witnessed robust growth of 21 per cent in the July-August period of the current fiscal year thanks to the devaluation of taka, high inflationary pressure and expansion of the economy.

The ongoing Household Income and Expenditure Survey is giving special emphasis to gauging Bangladesh’s food security in keeping with the global food shortage sown by the pandemic and turbocharged by the Ukraine war.

Bangladesh’s external debt repayment obligation will double in the next three years, according to data of the Economic Relations Division (ERD).

The government’s austerity measures have hit implementation of the annual development programme (ADP) in the first month of the current fiscal year, with just 0.96 per cent of the total allocation being spent, the lowest in the last four years. 

Despite a lot of emphasis by policy-makers on cutting dependence on a single product for exports over the years, the share of readymade garments has increased gradually, putting external sales, jobs, and the economy as a whole at risk. 

A Tk 9.95 crore project of the commerce ministry aimed at expanding the country’s export basket and reducing import dependency has failed to meet its deadline for a second time due to the slow pace of implementation.

Cement makers are passing tough times amidst a decline in demand from public construction in tune with the government’s austerity measures and sluggish private initiatives on building homes and other facilities for inflation.

Though four of its five stipulated years have already elapsed, a Local Government Engineering Department (LGED) project on developing 2,210 kilometres of rural roads has witnessed the completion of only a third of its core task. 

Bangladesh is wasting its once-in-a-lifetime window of demographic dividend --  the economic growth potential that can result from a peak in working-age people -- due to its inability to create jobs.