Rizwanul Islam

In the third quarter of 2024 (July-September), the rate of unemployment in Bangladesh rose to 4.49 percent from 4.07 percent during the same period of 2023 (The Daily Star, January 6, 2025).

Risk assessments of the kind done by the IMF are not usually done by the government, although it would have been desirable.

If one technological innovation is to be cited for capturing much of the talk time in discussions ranging from drawing rooms to corporate offices and academic institutions, it is ChatGPT. Released by Open AI in November 2022, this is a language model based on artificial intelligence (AI).

Any effort at halting inequality and reversing the trend has to start from a political commitment, an understanding of the factors at work, and adoption of necessary measures to attain the goals.

As is well-known, credit from the IMF comes with strings attached, and the latest one is no exception.

In countries like Bangladesh, where there is no provision for unemployment allowance, poor people cannot afford to remain without work.

The sharp rise in the rate of inflation witnessed in recent months is worrisome for at least two reasons: it is bad for investment decisions and economic growth, as well as for low-income people, especially those with fixed incomes.

The owner of Hashem Foods factory remarked that they were not the ones who set the fire that took 52 lives, including children and adolescents.

I haven’t visited my children or grandchildren for nearly a year and a half, neither have they visited me. They live in the USA, and I in Europe.

Although the budget for fiscal year 2020-21 projected a GDP growth of 8.2 per cent for the year, the Planning Commission has recently revised the projection down to 7.4 per cent.

It’s been almost one year since the novel coronavirus was identified in China and reported to WHO. During the past year, the pandemic caused by Covid-19 has spread to the entire world, over six and a half crores have been infected, and over 15 lakhs have died.

Use of telephone interview for a survey of income, expenditure and employment is rather ambitious, and I am wondering why a government organisation like the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics had to resort to this method - even taking into account the difficult environment created by the Covid pandemic.

The Covid-19 pandemic derailed life as a whole and severely disrupted the global economy as well as that of Bangladesh. Looking at the impact on economic growth, the country was cruising at over 8 percent growth of GDP which then came down to 5.24 percent (according to government estimates).

It is by now well-known that the economic crisis that resulted from the Covid-19 pandemic has severely affected the employment and labour situation – globally as well as in Bangladesh.

Steps taken to combat the coronavirus have severely disrupted public life and have put the livelihoods of millions in jeopardy. The global economy is in deep recession, especially the economies of the developed world; and there is a great deal of uncertainty as to when and how it might end. This is perhaps the deepest crisis human beings are facing after the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Second World War.

Among all the news about the fallout of the pandemic caused by COVID-19, two pieces of news didn’t escape my attention.

All over the world, jobs are being lost on a massive scale for measures adopted to fight the health crisis caused by coronavirus, and Bangladesh is no exception.

The coronavirus disease (Covid-19) that started in China has now become a global health crisis which, in turn, has caused an economic crisis.