Sohel Parvez

The National Board of Revenue (NBR) is witnessing slowing growth in the number of new taxpayers as the rule for compulsory tax return submission discourages many, officials say.

Social Islami Bank Ltd (SIBL) is focusing on small depositors and millions of unbanked people in order to build a strong deposit base.

While the queue of people behind open market sale (OMS) trucks of the food ministry continues to remain fairly long, food grain distribution by the ministry was said to have dropped 19 per cent year-on-year in the first four months of the current fiscal year. 

The coast of Mirsharai, an upazila in the southeast division of Chattogram, wakes up in the morning to the sounds of under-construction factories, and machines of several newly-built plants on a vast part of the region.

The government is giving priority to develop economic zones on khas or state-owned fallow lands to reduce pressure on the public exchequer in acquiring land from individual owners, according to the Bangladesh Economic Zones Authority (Beza).

Bangladesh’s earnings from vegetable exports dipped to six-year low in the July-October period of the current fiscal year as high air-freight rates and increased prices eroded the competitiveness of fresh produce.

With wheat flour prices crossing Tk 60 per kilogramme (kg) by the end of last week, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) maintained its price warning level for the second most consumed grain at “high” in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh’s overall wheat consumption is likely to drop 10 per cent to 69 lakh tonnes in the marketing year of 2022-23 as high market prices and lower supply of wheat and wheat flour are reducing consumer demand, according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). 

Bangladesh’s rice production may decline in marketing year (MY) 2022-23, which began in May, as severe floods damaged pre-monsoon crop Aus in the north and northeastern regions during planting, said a USDA report released on Monday. 

Bangladesh’s steel industry is set to see the entry of a couple of large business houses while several existing steelworks are looking to expand their capacities in order to gain from the rising demand for the key construction material.

The steel manufacturing plants in Bangladesh are less polluting and the lowest carbon emitters compared to the largest producers globally, mainly for the melting process followed locally and the efficient consumption of energy and water, said a top industrialist.  

Cyclone Sitrang is over and the weather is forecast to be sunny today. But for thousands of people in Bangladesh, including farmers, it is rather gloomy. 

Cyclone Sitrang has affected 33,000 hectares of transplanted Aman paddy crop and washed away fish and shrimps mainly in the southern coastal districts, officials said yesterday.  

Growth of monthly wages of workers has consistently remained below the inflation rate, or spiral in the prices of goods and services, worsening conditions of their families. 

The ongoing liquidity stress has become a major concern for Bangladesh’s banking sector as people hardly park funds with lenders due to higher consumer prices, which have turned the return on deposits negative, said a top banker. 

Bangladesh made gains in food production and ensured the availability of rice in recent years. But surging inflation, erratic weather, and the Russia-Ukraine war affected the availability of cereals and reduced low-income people’s access to food this year.

Scrap vessel imports slumped by half in the first nine months of the year as Bangladesh Bank is discouraging lenders from opening letters of credit to curb the depletion of forex reserves amid the soaring cost of the US dollar.

Bangladeshi consumers are paying the highest ever prices to buy wheat flour as supply and private stocks of the grain slumped in the domestic market in the wake of a dip in imports since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war.

Bangladesh is currently weathering a period of heightened external pressure and economic headwinds like it has done since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic and kept growing, said a top official of a multinational bank.  

The economy of Bangladesh has continued to suffer from foreign exchange-related stress as both exports and remittances declined in September whereas import payments were almost unchanged.