Selim Raihan

The current global political, economic and trade situations are not favourable for a developing country like Bangladesh.

The national budget for the next fiscal year will be the third since the start of the Covid-19 crisis in March 2020. Can we expect it to address the current realities, contexts and challenges of Bangladesh?

Do the official inflation figures in Bangladesh reflect the actual inflation faced by the economically marginalised households in the country?

As we continue to celebrate 50 years of Bangladesh’s independence, there is a need for an elaborate discussion about the development challenges we are about to face in the days to come. Bangladesh’s development challenges are associated with its larger development goals.

Seeing the varying degrees of Covid that the world has experienced over the last one and a half years, we can safely assume that this pandemic is here to stay.

In Bangladesh, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have heterogeneous characteristics, which are evident from their diverse business activities. However, the discussion on SMEs has a fundamental problem related to the definition and scope.

Around a year and a half have passed since the onset of the Covid crisis.

This year’s national budget will be the second to be implemented amid the ongoing unprecedented economic and social crisis brought on by Covid-19.

In Bangladesh, despite the gradual rise in the investment-GDP ratio over the past three decades, private sector investment, in proportion to GDP, had remained stagnant for years even before the onset of Covid-19. The Covid-19 crisis intensified the problem.

Covid-19 deeply affected the labour market in Bangladesh. It intensified some of the existing challenges and brought about a new set of problems. A large number of people either lost employment or income and many are also experiencing intense job insecurity and uncertainty.

Academics, policymakers and other stakeholders in the Bay of Bengal region and beyond agree on the need for greater integration in this region.

Despite signs of recovery in the economy, there is no denying the fact that the impact of Covid-19 on the labour market can be far reaching.

The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in an unprecedented rise in poverty in Bangladesh in a very short time span.

As the Covid-19 pandemic left a deep dent on the development trajectories of Bangladesh, the country must set its development priorities right in 2021. Bangladesh aims to achieve the stiff Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, and it aspires to become an upper-middle-income country by 2031.

Covid-19 has generated hugely distressing effects on the economy of Bangladesh.

Covid-19 has brought about an unprecedented crisis in human history in terms of its dimension and scale.

The Covid-19 induced economic crisis has affected the export and import of Bangladesh by large margins. The economic crisis has been exacerbated by the closure or limited operation of businesses during the lockdown at home and abroad.

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.