Rejaul Karim Byron

The government is seeking funds from development partners to help the health ministry combat the spread of the novel coronavirus.

The government is putting its best foot forward to help farmers buy agricultural machinery with subsidy ahead of the next boro season so that the growers can bring down their production costs, said officials of the agriculture ministry.

Technology can change the world, it is often said. And the lives of the country’s 1.5 crore farm families, who are often shorn of fair prices, are about to change with the government move to purchase paddy from them by way of a mobile application.

A common platform comprising the Office of Comptroller and Auditor General (OCAG) of Bangladesh and the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) is on the cards to apprehend the financial wrong-doers and punish them, said the country’s top auditor.

The government is set to construct a deep seaport at Matarbari in Cox’s Bazar to help the country handle rising volumes of exports and imports and ease the pressure on the Chattogram port.

The cost of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Railway Bridge Construction Project has gone up to Tk 16,781 crore from Tk 9,734 crore.

At a time when people are grappling with high prices of many daily essentials, the government has hiked electricity prices.

Bangladesh’s export and import activities will both be affected by the coronavirus pandemic but the country would not face much difficulty in attaining its GDP growth target of 8.20 per cent for this fiscal year, according to an official document.

Poorly managed exchange rate, ad hoc-based incentive and existing domestic protection levels will not make Bangladesh’s exports competitive and help diversify both products and destinations, according to a new plan of the government.

Nine out of 10 children experience some form of violent disciplining by their caregivers, according to a recent survey by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) and Unicef, released yesterday.

Major Japanese large firms are to invest about $6.4 billion to implement six infrastructure projects in Bangladesh under the public-private partnership model.

A section of well-off people have apparently made a mad dash for post office accounts right after the government tightened rules on investment in high interest-bearing national savings certificates.

Between 1990 and 2017, the increase in the road crash fatality rate per capita was three times higher in Bangladesh than that across South Asia, according to a World Bank report.

It took the government almost nine years to draw up a project for relocating chemical factories and warehouses from Old Dhaka’s Nimtoli where an inferno claimed 124 lives in 2010.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has approved a masterplan to free all major rivers in and around Dhaka and Chattogram cities from encroachment and pollution by 2030.

Savings accounts in post offices saw soaring deposits in recent years thanks to high interest rates offered by the government to tempt people in the suburbs and rural areas to use formal channels for parking their funds.

The rot starts at the top, it is often said. And it is this pandemic that the central bank is looking to tackle in the new Banking Companies Act.

Teletalk, it often seems, is overindulged.

The interest rate on government Treasury bills and bonds, the main instruments for bank borrowing, doubled in the last one year -- a development that will fuel budgetary expenditure and may discourage private sector credit, both of which are already sources of concern.

Since time immemorial Bangladesh has been taking on aids, grants and financial assistance from the global community. But now, it is providing debt relief to another nation, in a testament of the progress the country has made.