Rejaul Karim Byron

The government has reached a staff-level agreement with the International Monetary Fund for the fourth and fifth tranche of the $4.7 billion loan programme, putting to bed months of uncertainty over their disbursement.

The government is planning to significantly reduce its bank borrowing target in the upcoming fiscal year as it aims to narrow the budget deficit by scaling down the overall budget size.

The government is set to reach an agreement with the International Monetary Fund over the exchange rate issue that has been holding up the release of the fourth and fifth tranches of the $4.7 billion loan programme soon.

In a country weighed down by high inflation, dwindling fiscal space and weak investments, now is not the time for illusions.

Bangladesh’s upcoming national budget, set to be unveiled by the interim government in June, could mark a rare departure from past fiscal cycles.

Bangladesh’s approach to budgeting for health and education has come under sharp scrutiny, as decades of allocations have primarily gone towards construction. Meanwhile, the core of these sectors, service delivery, has been historically neglected.

Bangladesh’s interim government is preparing to unveil a rare contractionary budget on June 2, driven by a sharp rise in interest payment that is crowding out fiscal space and forcing spending cuts.

As part of policy reforms aimed at improving the credibility and accuracy of national statistics, the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) has been empowered to publish official data without prior government approval.