As full interoperability launches on November 1, 2025, Bangladesh stands on the verge of its most transformative financial reform since the birth of mobile money, one that could turn inefficiency into inclusion and cash into data-driven growth. 

It was once beyond imagination that money could exist entirely in digital form, except in science fiction. Then it happened. Crypto began as a small experiment and turned into a global phenomenon.

For years, citizens in Bangladesh have struggled with a fragmented and inefficient system for obtaining vital documents.

I went to my village home a few weeks ago. My uncle, a veteran of the 1971 Liberation War, does not mind paying extra to secure a job for his graduate son.

If you walk into a startup pitch competition in Dhaka, it often feels like going to a winter wedding. Everyone wears the same panjabi and waistcoat, and talks about disruption in the same polished accent they learned from a YouTube video.

Bangladesh must rethink how it finances its infrastructure. The current system is too weak to bear the weight of an aspiring middle-income nation. Highways, ports, power grids, water systems, health facilities, education, digital networks, business districts and technology hubs all demand massive investment if the country is to become a developed economy.

Bangladesh’s economy presents a striking contrast. Its markets for real sector products such as consumer goods, construction materials, pharmaceuticals, and real assets like land and apartments are relatively robust, with their share of GDP comparable to peer countries.

Bangladesh’s economic success over the past two decades is remarkable, yet its foundation remains precariously narrow.

Succession planning remains one of the weakest aspects of corporate governance in Bangladesh. While multinationals operating here view salaries as long-term investments in leadership pipelines, most local firms continue to treat them as costs.

The Economist once credited effective cash management, also known as transaction banking, as a key reason for Citigroup’s survival during the global financial meltdown in 2008. Citi’s global transaction services earned a lot of recognition for helping the bank manage its assets and liabilities more efficiently.

When Citibank Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jane Fraser decided to wind down the bank’s retail operations around the world, her main focus was to pivot towards wealth management. HSBC has taken a similar approach, and its recent closure of retail banking in Bangladesh and markets such as Indonesia reflects this shift.

The officially reported figures showing only a slight rise in food inflation in September 2025 seem hard to reconcile with ground realities. Anyone who has visited a kitchen market in Dhaka in recent months knows that the prices of essentials, such as rice, flour, pulses, edible oil, meat, and fish, have surged far more sharply than the marginal 0.04 percentage point increase would suggest.

Bangladesh’s banking sector is entering a historic transformation as five Shariah-based private commercial banks prepare to merge into a single state-owned Islamic bank. The institutions under consideration are First Security Islami Bank, Global Islami Bank, Union Bank, Social Islami Bank and EXIM Bank. Backed by the Bangladesh Bank, the merger aims to restore confidence in Islamic banking, improve governance and strengthen financial stability. Yet for shareholders, one question remains: what will happen to their investments?

Across the world, bank mergers or acquisitions are supposed to create added synergy. In our part of the world, however, they are often undertaken out of necessity.

A CEO in Dhaka once gathered his managers and declared with great seriousness, “Our company has only one purpose: to maximise profit.

The national economy of Bangladesh is facing one of its toughest tests in decades. The provisional GDP growth for this fiscal year is only 3.97 percent, the lowest in 34 years apart from the pandemic period. It is true that a sluggish growth rate can have different interpretations when compared with previous years, but few can deny the adverse state of many economic indicators even after more than a year of the interim government.

In just under three months, the Bangladesh Bank has purchased nearly $1.9 billion from local banks this fiscal year, including $265 million in a single day and $129.5 million through an auction last week. For many people, this seems puzzling. Prices are still rising, families are cutting down on essentials, and yet the central bank is spending heavily to buy dollars instead of allowing the Taka to strengthen and make imports cheaper.

The news on Priya’s phone screen felt like a ghost. It was a report of numbers: poverty at nearly 28 percent, jobless growth. These figures seemed as remote from her life in the Korail slum as the glass towers of Gulshan. She had once believed in the “development miracle” of Bangladesh, leaving her village in the hope of joining it. Now it seemed that the miracle was a party for a select few, and she was left outside, looking in.

Bangladesh has achieved remarkable progress over recent decades, driven by exports, remittances and a dynamic private sector. Yet in a world of growing volatility from geopolitical shifts, energy price shocks and currency swings, resilience alone is no longer enough. Safeguarding our economic stability must begin with how we manage foreign exchange reserves.

When the numbers turn red, you feel it before you see it. The office grows quieter. Conversations stop when you walk by.