Ahsan Habib

The strain on dollar stockpile intensified last month after remittance inflows crashed to a 41-month low and export receipts missed target.

New York-based Global Finance magazine finds, reviews performance of central bank chiefs of 102 countries.

A persistently higher inflation for more than a year has hit the low-income, the poor and the fixed-income people in Bangladesh hard, significantly eroding their purchasing power.  

The banking sector’s lending growth squeezed in the April to June quarter owing to a shortage of liquidity at most banks and their unwillingness to extend credits to borrowers already struggling to pay back, official figures showed. 

Although Reckitt Benckiser (Bangladesh) PLC, with renowned household brands such as Mortein, Dettol and Harpic, is light years ahead of little-known cold storage Himadri Ltd in terms of business performance, their stocks prices belie the real scenario.

The number of banks, insurance companies, brokerage firms, and merchant banks is much higher in Bangladesh than in many other countries at a similar level of development or having a similar size of population and economy.

The cost of debt servicing has risen significantly amid a higher flow of loans from development partners and an elevated level of interest payments, compounding pressure on the foreign currency reserve of Bangladesh, official figures showed.  

Many entrepreneurs are interested in making their projects greener, thanks to higher sustainable financing from both banks and non-bank financial institutions year after year.

Tanvir Islam, a banker, has invested Tk 17 lakh in the stock market since he started trading on the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) a decade ago.  

The Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC) is finalising a draft of rules regarding the commodity exchange on availing opinions from stakeholders with hopes that the first-ever exchange can be launched within a couple of months. 

Only two years ago, Bangladesh's stock market was termed 'hidden gem.'

Investors are hardly showing any interest to buy stocks of banks mainly due to the sector’s key indicators portraying a gloomy outlook. 

The outflow of migrant workers from Bangladesh to Saudi Arabia surged around four times in the last three years but remittance earnings from the country have kept falling, official figures showed.  

Bangladesh’s financial sector is struggling to win back people’s trust mainly due to the deterioration of some key indicators amid a lack of good governance, irregularities and lighter punishment for wrongdoers, according to analysts. 

Although most non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs) in Bangladesh are struggling with a high rate of non-performing loans (NPLs), some of them are bucking the trend by maintaining a lower ratio.

Nearly half of non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs) saw a third of their loans turn into non-performing ones at the end of March 2023, which gives an indication of the tough times the sector was going through mainly due to massive irregularities in 8 to 10 companies. 

All of the listed non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs) in Bangladesh that published their financial reports for the January-June period of the current calendar year reported lower earnings due to reduced interest income, among other reasons.

Seven months have passed since the world bid adieu to 2022, but almost half of the listed non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs) in Bangladesh have not published their financial statements for the year, breaching securities rules. 

Microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Bangladesh witnessed an 85 percent year-on-year jump in non-performing loans in 2021-22 as borrowers struggled to pay back owing to the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic and the economic slowdown, official figures showed.  

Nine foreign banks operating in Bangladesh hardly invest in the stock market owing largely to irregularities, speculation-driven investments and an inadequate number of well-performing companies that have gone public.