Zina Tasreen

He set off to save lives and livelihoods in his third budget as the finance minister and his second amid the global coronavirus pandemic, and along the way, went astray.

We are sailing through the most extraordinary times in living memory, with every facet of what we knew as normal life upended. So, one would expect the man heading the Bangladesh arm of a multinational behemoth like Unilever to be fidgety.

Any finance minister delivering a national budget wants, ideally, to project three qualities: calm, authority and very slight dullness.

It seems the universe keeps conspiring against Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal. When it is his moment to shine, some misfortune strikes. Last year, it was dengue, and this year, it is the raging coronavirus that has left him at the centre of what could possibly be Bangladesh’s most acute economic -- and human -- crisis yet.

Optimism is a disease, the polemical British-Indian novelist Salman Rushdie once said, and talking with Manmohan Parkash, the country director of the Asian Development Bank, one can’t help but catch that disease.

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.

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.

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?

Gamechanger -- is what best describes the debut of Bangla Bond, a taka-denominated debt instrument, on the London Stock Exchange on November 11 for Bangladesh.

Much has been said about the tremendous growth momentum of the Bangladesh economy. It was amongst the fastest growing nations in the world in the past decade, as per data from the state-run Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics -- and the trend is expected to continue into the near future, too.

All great things start from small beginnings, it is often said. And Bangladesh’s eight-place leap forward in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business 2020 index can be viewed in this light.

In 2011, with great hope, Monwara Shameem had handed over her 8.25 decimals of land in Mohakhali DOHS to a reputed developer to construct a six-storied apartment building.

The template of nuclear family, in which the dad went to work and the mum stayed at home, is fast on its way out.

People do not lack strength; they lack will, the French poet and novelist Victor Hugo once said. The words perfectly describe the government’s attitude thus far towards fixing the banking sector.

Each month, Ayesha Amin, a housewife, aims to put Tk 5,000 of the money her husband hands over to her for the running of the house, in her savings account.

All eyes were on fever-stricken Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal as he stepped into parliament to unveil his maiden national budget yesterday.

The Bangladesh economy is taxing for take-off -- for its long-haul flight to the developed country club, with couple of stopovers in between.

The holy month of Ramadan that crescendos in Eid-ul-Fitr is undoubtedly the dearest for people in Bangladesh.

Credit card: two words the mention of which turn many into full-blown cynics. While it is undeniable that anyone who has a credit card risks running up too much debt -- a milestone that might take several years and lots of sacrifice to get rid of -- if used wisely the benefits can outweigh the downsides.

Debit cards are the happy medium between credit cards and cash -- one gets the convenience of carrying a card without the risk of