Reaz Ahmad

Halima Khatun, a 55-year-old widow, has to rely on income from fixed deposit receipt (FDR).

The government has decided to provide the poor with subsidised food, despite experiencing a bad crop year owing to early deluge in

The number of beneficiaries, who get allowances and food from the government under various social safety net programmes (SSNPs),

When Finance Minister AMA Muhith presents the budget in parliament tomorrow, he will likely gloat about it -- Tk four lakh crore in size -- which is 26 percent bigger than the one for the outgoing fiscal year. Not that presenting a big budget is of great significance for Muhith; he has been doing it for the past few years. In fact, it is under his tutelage that the budget has risen from below Tk one lakh crore in 2009 to Tk four lakh crore this time around.

A fifth of the forthcoming fiscal year's total development budget is earmarked for six fast-track projects to make their progress visible before the next general elections.

The government is getting ready to further increase its fiscal outlay on food dole in the 2017-18 fiscal year.

Amidst a major Boro crop loss, Bangladesh for the first time in five years is going to the international market to buy rice with the aim of reining in the soaring prices of the staple.

The Asian Development Bank is upscaling its loan portfolio in Bangladesh to nearly double this year, to keep pace with its economy

Bangladesh is opposed to any regional hub of the Asian Development Bank as most country and sub-regional offices are faring well,

Asia's future development funding has to come from the private sector through public-private partnerships, said Takehiko Nakao,

Bangladesh has been named one of the six emerging Asian economies where growth gathered momentum, with the other five being India, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines and Vietnam.

Poverty would no longer exist in Bangladesh after 2024, Finance Minister AMA Muhith said in his speech at the 50th annual meeting of

Bangladesh topped the list of all the developing member countries of the Asian Development Bank in terms of loan disbursement ratio last year, followed by China, Pakistan, India and Vietnam.

The Asian Development Bank is ready to partner with Bangladesh in generating clean and renewable energies, including solar,

Bangladesh should seize the opportunities that China is creating by slowly retreating from the export markets, said Yasuyuki Sawada, chief economist of the Asian Development Bank, yesterday.

Keeping the looming water scarcity in mind, the Asian Development Bank has nearly doubled its allocation for water sector projects across Asia to $4.2 billion this year, up from an average yearly funding of $2.4 billion in the last six years.

A third of hog plums and a sixth of guavas that the country produces each year are grown in three southwestern

For the first time in recent years, Bangladesh is set to experience a less productive rice season owing to a huge loss of Boro crops. Back-to-back disasters -- flashfloods, intense rainfall and fungal disease blast attacks -- have come as a blow to Boro, the biggest of the country's three rice seasons. The other two seasons are Aus and Aman.

A government dispatched experts' team reached Sunamganj yesterday to collect water samples from the haors there for lab test at the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission to ascertain whether there is any radioactive materials in the waters.

Bangladesh experiences flash floods ever so often and farmers are no stranger to crop loss as a result. But the deaths of fish, frogs and fowls in their hundreds as an aftermath of such floods are a new phenomenon altogether.