Good morning. If you’re traveling on buses from Mirpur, you might be relieved to know that the much-awaited e-ticketing service was launched earlier this week. Here are five other stories to start your day up-to-date.

Martin Raiser, the World Bank’s vice president for the South Asia Region, arrives in Dhaka tomorrow to discuss further reforms with the government for the support package sought to help Bangladesh tide over the period of global economic turmoil.

This fiscal year alone, the Bangladesh Bank has supplied more than $4.5 billion to the market to support the exchange rate, while the import bill averages $6 billion a month.

The government yesterday reached a preliminary agreement with the International Monetary Fund over a $4.5 billion loan programme, putting to bed all suspense on whether a deal would be struck with the multilateral lender at all.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) has advised the government to rationalise the existing tariff structure by reducing various types of para and non-tariff barriers to improve competitiveness of domestic industries. 

All our institutions are crumbling because of politicisation, inefficiencies, and corruption.

The International Monitory Fund has outlined wider reform measures, including bringing discipline to the financial sector and boosting revenue collection, for Bangladesh to avail the $4.5 billion loan.

The economy needs firm handling to ensure the situation doesn't turn into a crisis.

If things are bad, there must be a good reason for it.

Record price hikes mark an anti-people policy shift

The rise in fuel prices is an illogical decision that will only harm ordinary citizens and fail to deal with the root causes of the crisis that Bangladesh is currently facing.

Fighting tax evasion, preventing trade-based illicit financial outflows and ending the culture of money laundering and loan defaults is a much more sustainable solution to adding to foreign exchange reserves than taking foreign loans on interest.

Bangladesh has to prioritise its own interest while taking loan from the development partners, said Mushtaq Khan, professor of Economics at School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. 

The International Monetary Fund is expecting a formal request for a loan from Bangladesh soon to provide a buffer to the delicate foreign currency reserves amid global economic volatility even though the government remains in two minds about it.