Supply of vegetables and essential goods to Dhaka has also been disrupted as the number of goods-laden trucks entering the capital fell sharply yesterday and the day before, they said.

Stocks in Bangladesh fell for a second consecutive day yesterday as skittish investors sold off their shares in panic amidst a countrywide shutdown enforced by students demanding withdrawal of a quota system in government jobs.

Broadly, the policy measure to control inflation remains the same in the Monetary Policy Statement (MPS) of the Bangladesh Bank for July-December 2024.

In their Monetary Policy Statement (MPS) for the first half of FY25, Bangladesh Bank (BB) has stuck to the policy stance already in place. 

Despite suggestions for a policy rate hike from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and economists, the central bank of Bangladesh has kept unchanged the major tool of its monetary policy at 8.5 percent although inflation is running high.

Bangladesh’s exports have been declining over the past three years, according to the central bank data.

In the last one week, Bangladesh has been in the grip of student unrest over the quota system, rendering discussions over its merits and demerits a household phenomenon.

Import and sale of reconditioned vehicles have increased in Bangladesh at a time when the country is suffering from high inflationary pressure and foreign currency crisis.

The NBR's collection target for the current fiscal year is Tk 480,000 crore, which is about 17 percent more than the previous fiscal year.

Turnover slumped 48.9 percent year-on-year to $23.6 billion in 2022-23, the central bank said in its Monetary Policy Review 2023-24 published last week.

Bangladesh is set to include online economic activities of firms and households in its new census this year to cover all sectors of the country, a move that is expected to present data about the size of the expanding digital economy.

There was an expectation that investment inflows from China to Bangladesh would increase substantially following the Covid-19 pandemic as investors in China were looking for an alternative manufacturing hub.

The government does not have adequate taka and US dollars to implement the budget because of financial distress and its failure to raise enough revenues, said Ahsan H Mansur, executive director of the Policy Research Institute of Bangladesh, yesterday.

Free trade agreements (FTA) are made between countries to lower trade barriers through little to zero government tariffs or subsidies and other means.

Defaulted loans at non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs) soared 38 percent to a record Tk 23,208.7 crore at the end of 2023, raising concerns over the sector’s deteriorating health.

This comes after the regulator sent a notice to GP on June 30 for “not using the allocated spectrum”, which affected the operator’s quality of service.

China currently has a total of 339 gigawatts (GW) of capacity under construction, including 159 GW of wind and 180 GW of solar, which far exceeds the second-ranked nation, the United States, which is building a total of just 40 GW.

Diesel will cost Tk 273.67 crore, LNG Tk 583.56 crore

The EU has enacted new rules on corporate sustainability reporting. On January 5, 2023, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) entered into force. This directive requires a broader set of large, small and medium companies, as well as foreign companies with significant revenue from the EU markets to report a wide range of environmental and social parameters.

The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has exempted companies and firms from paying the environmental surcharge for owning more than one car.