Rejaul Karim Byron

The government has extended policy support to garment exporting factories falling under the small and medium enterprise (SME) category to improve their competitiveness during this time of the coronavirus pandemic.

Cabinet ministers cannot spend more than $700 in entertainment purposes and $250 for other expenses during their official trips abroad as the government has moved to consolidate its expenditures under development and revenue budgets.

Record remittance earnings and foreign currency reserves are among a few positive takeaways for the government in an otherwise painful fiscal year as the devastating coronavirus pandemic pushed revenue collection to an unprecedented fall and exports to collapse.

Classified loans in the banking sector rose 3.9 per cent quarter-to-quarter to Tk 96,117 crore in June largely because of a higher volume of risky assets at private and state-run specialised lenders.

The government would hold talks with Chinese officials tomorrow as part of its desperate efforts to give impetus to the mega projects held up by the coronavirus pandemic.

The plan to offload an additional 15.2 per cent shares of state-run Rupali Bank has been revived after a delay caused by the coronavirus pandemic and the lender’s preoccupation in disbursing stimulus packages.

Inflation fell 49 basis points to 5.53 per cent in July compared to a month earlier, led by the fall in food prices.

Manufacturing activity in Bangladesh dropped as much as 28.78 per cent in April from a month earlier, official figures showed, in a first glimpse of the major blow the coronavirus pandemic dished out to the economy.

Youth unemployment in Bangladesh may more than double in 2020 if the country takes six months to contain the coronavirus pandemic, which has caused economic output and demand to fall drastically, said a new report.

The government has directed ministries and divisions to pick high-priority projects from the list of the unapproved schemes in the annual development programme as development work has been hamstrung by revenue shortage caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

The government has distributed cash support among 35 lakh beneficiaries rendered poor because of the coronavirus pandemic after preparing a database through multi-layer scrutiny of the people who needed it most.

The financial regulators and the government organisations are still struggling to resolve the much-talked five financial scams in the country as the embezzled fund worth Tk 18,253 crore are yet to be recovered.

The planning ministry yesterday expressed disappointment over frequent amendments in projects, one after another missed deadlines, and the directors’ absence at project sites.

Bangladesh’s investment to gross domestic product (GDP) ratio rose in the just-concluded fiscal year, data from the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics showed on Tuesday, in what can be viewed as an inexplicable development as most indicators were pointing towards a contrary scenario.

In the end, the final data from state-run Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) shows the economy grew at a respectable 5.2 per cent last fiscal year, when large swathes of the global economy plunged into recession for the outbreak of coronavirus from Wuhan, China.

The government yesterday included a rail route in the Bangladesh-Nepal’s existing transit agreement to give a much-needed boost to bilateral trade by cutting distance.

The government has decided to prepare a roadmap to ensure full implementation of the annual development programme this fiscal year after development expenditure fell to a 27-year low in fiscal 2019-20.

A silver lining seems to have appeared in front of Navana Group at last.

Bangladesh yesterday got the first tranche of the $1 billion loan pledged by Japan to bounce back from economic whiplash brought on by the global coronavirus pandemic.

Amnesty to black money has always been a nonstarter, so Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal’s move to tuck in the facility with added benefits in this fiscal year’s budget has left many scratching their heads.