Rejaul Karim Byron

There was a time when Bangladeshi finance ministers would land in Paris with a briefcase in hand to seek financial assistance from donors.

The World Bank yesterday praised the progress Bangladesh achieved in recent years but apprehends a struggle ahead for the low tax revenue and banking sector’s poor condition.

Age is the price of wisdom, it is often said. And an audience with the immediate past finance minister, AMA Muhith, calls to mind that saying.

The current vulnerable state of the banking sector steeped in default loans poses the biggest danger to sustenance of Bangladesh’s tremendous growth momentum, said the International Monetary Fund.

Halfway through an interview at the Planning Commission, Planning Minister MA Mannan is asked about the logic behind the inordinate number of projects that are in implementation at any given moment.

Bangladesh could achieve only a little more than half of the targets set by the World Bank Group for 84 projects and programmes in the last four years, says a draft performance review report of the World Bank Group.

Coal-fired Payra power plant in Patuakhali began test production yesterday, making it the first large-scale plant to come into operation since the Awami League swept to power a decade ago.

Most of the private banks have raised their capital base in line with the Basel III requirements three months prior to the deadline set to reach the global regulatory standard.

The project cost of building a rail bridge over the Jamuna river has increased by Tk 3,216 crore even before the start of physical work.

Farmers may get 50 to 70 percent incentive while buying agricultural machinery and also avail low-cost loans, as the government looks to pivot to farm mechanisation amid rising costs and growing labour shortage.

The man with the plan, is the impression one walks away with after an audience with Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal. Later, one is invariably met with the question: was he being a little too optimistic and naive?

Bangladesh Bank is set to raise the loan-deposit ratio by another 1 percentage point as it looks to reduce the interest rate for manufacturing sector and increase lendable fund of banks.

Budget deficit, which is when spending exceeds revenue, is set to cross the sensible perimeter of 5 percent of GDP in fiscal 2018-19 for the first time in 12 years on the back of ebbing collections of the tax administrator.

First impressions are the most lasting, it is often said. And in case of cities and countries, it is often airports that provides that.

Sometimes things have to go wrong in order to go right, American author Sherrilyn Kenyon once said.

The government has planned to construct a four-storey building on Bhashan Char for the UN and aid agency representatives to ensure effective monitoring of humanitarian activities for one lakh Rohingya refugees to be relocated to the island from Cox’s Bazar.

The government yesterday signed a loan agreement with the Asian Development Bank to get the long-cherished MRT Line-5 (southern route) project going.

Learn from the greats, and expose yourself to better work, it is often advised. So, when implementing big, state-of-the-art projects, it is prudent to go abroad and get first-hand experience of how things are done.

India is set to start in January the trial run for transporting goods between its northeastern states and other parts using Bangladesh’s Chattogram and Mongla ports.

India wants three more transshipment points in Bangladesh for transporting goods to its north-eastern states, according to the agenda of a bilateral meeting that begins in Dhaka today.