Selim Raihan

The fundamental objective of the budget for the next financial year (FY21) should have been to resolve the unparalleled health and economic threats raised by the Covid-19 pandemic, and to restore economic stability. Though the budget has acknowledged the context, it falls short to be a Covid-19 responsive budget.

The economic crisis caused by Covid-19 is deepening in Bangladesh every day.

The effects of Covid-19 on the national economies and the global economy are going to be unprecedented.

The Sustainable Develop-ment Goals (SDGs) are some ambitious development objectives with a total of 17 goals with 169 targets spanning economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development.

There are two contrasting contexts as far as the competitiveness of Bangladesh economy is concerned. On the one hand, the economic growth rate in Bangladesh has been increasing since 2013;

“Policy paralysis” can be described as a situation where critically important laws and reforms are not undertaken or, even if undertaken, not implemented as a result of a lack

There have been four waves of industrial revolution so far in the history of mankind. The first industrial revolution (from the mid-seventeenth century to the mid-eighteen century) took place in Europe and the United States. Dr Selim Raihan is Professor, Department of Economics, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Executive Director, South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (SANEM). Email: selim.raihan@econdu.ac.bd

One major challenge faced by policymakers in most developing countries is that though conventional measurements of poverty are useful in identifying the poor people in general, these measurements fail to capture the critical sections of the population who are

Economic growth with the reduction in poverty and inequality are important development objectives in the policymaking process in Bangladesh.

Education and health play key roles in human capital formation. Investment in human capital formation is considered a means of improving the quality of life and sustaining economic growth. Education and health are regarded as critical pathways to economic development as they increase the productivity of individuals and generate skilled labour force.

Bangladesh's economic growth and development performance over the past two decades have been impressive.

Despite diverging economic and political trajectories, South Asian countries share commonalities in terms of emerging development challenges in the wake of the new world and regional dynamics.

Bangladesh's economic growth and development experiences over the past four and a half decades since independence in 1971 have generated a lot of interests among academics and development practitioners both from home and abroad.

Today, there are six major macroeconomic challenges for Bangladesh's economy. First, accelerating economic growth and maintaining high economic growth over the coming years will remain a big challenge.

Global climate change has become one of the dominant discourses in the scientific and public policy arena.

The long-term trend of GDP growth rate of Bangladesh shows that the country has continued to improve its rate of growth steadily over the past 46 years after independence in 1971.

The idea of globalisation and free trade has gained prominence in the world over the past three decades. Despite some limitations, globalisation and free trade regime are seen as beneficial for economic development, poverty reduction, and enhanced integration among countries.

Experience from successful industrialised countries suggests that industrialisation brings significant structural change in the economy which leads to considerable reduction in poverty, large-scale job creation and substantial improvement in the welfare of the people of a country.

What is the future economic growth prospect of Bangladesh? An analysis of Bangladesh's past economic growth in a comparative perspective can help find an answer to this question.

According to the official statistics, between 2013 and 2016-17, on average, gross domestic product (GDP) in Bangladesh grew annually by 6.6 percent, and there has been a net increase of 2.8 million new jobs on top of the 60.7 million jobs that existed in the economy in 2013.