Zina Tasreen

When Bangladesh agreed to provide $250 million to Sri Lanka last year, little did it think that it would become a side character in the horror show that is unfolding in the island nation.

What does one do when one sees wrongdoing taking place in front of one’s very eyes? For most, the natural response would be to stop it in its tracks.

Grey area. The place between black and white -- and that is where life happens. This begs the question: shouldn’t the government’s communication be clear and concise for events that might fall in the grey area?

A hidden gem is what British banking giant HSBC dubbed Bangladesh's bourse earlier last month.

Often touted as the backbone of an economy, Bangladesh has never wholeheartedly nurtured the cottage, micro, small and medium enterprises sector like the governments around the world, particularly those of China, India, the UK, the US.

Don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs -- suggests the famous Greek storyteller Aesop. And looking at Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal’s proposed tax measures for the mobile financial services operators for the incoming fiscal year, one cannot help but recall the famous fable.

The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission’s move on Sunday to fix the broadband prices brings to mind an oft-used quote by celebrated French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: A goal without a plan is nothing but a wish.

He set off to save lives and livelihoods in his third budget as the finance minister and his second amid the global coronavirus pandemic, and along the way, went astray.

We are sailing through the most extraordinary times in living memory, with every facet of what we knew as normal life upended. So, one would expect the man heading the Bangladesh arm of a multinational behemoth like Unilever to be fidgety.

Any finance minister delivering a national budget wants, ideally, to project three qualities: calm, authority and very slight dullness.

It seems the universe keeps conspiring against Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal. When it is his moment to shine, some misfortune strikes. Last year, it was dengue, and this year, it is the raging coronavirus that has left him at the centre of what could possibly be Bangladesh’s most acute economic -- and human -- crisis yet.

Optimism is a disease, the polemical British-Indian novelist Salman Rushdie once said, and talking with Manmohan Parkash, the country director of the Asian Development Bank, one can’t help but catch that disease.

Age is the price of wisdom, it is often said. And an audience with the immediate past finance minister, AMA Muhith, calls to mind that saying.

Halfway through an interview at the Planning Commission, Planning Minister MA Mannan is asked about the logic behind the inordinate number of projects that are in implementation at any given moment.

The man with the plan, is the impression one walks away with after an audience with Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal. Later, one is invariably met with the question: was he being a little too optimistic and naive?

Gamechanger -- is what best describes the debut of Bangla Bond, a taka-denominated debt instrument, on the London Stock Exchange on November 11 for Bangladesh.

Much has been said about the tremendous growth momentum of the Bangladesh economy. It was amongst the fastest growing nations in the world in the past decade, as per data from the state-run Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics -- and the trend is expected to continue into the near future, too.

All great things start from small beginnings, it is often said. And Bangladesh’s eight-place leap forward in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business 2020 index can be viewed in this light.

In 2011, with great hope, Monwara Shameem had handed over her 8.25 decimals of land in Mohakhali DOHS to a reputed developer to construct a six-storied apartment building.

The template of nuclear family, in which the dad went to work and the mum stayed at home, is fast on its way out.