Rejaul Karim Byron

The government has moved to amend the 129-year old Bankers’ Books Evidence Act to make it time-benefiting in keeping with the massive changes in the banking sector triggered by technological advancement.

Data about a quarter of the indicators needed to monitor Bangladesh’s progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are readily available, exposing the challenges the country faces in finding out how it is faring in attaining the Vision 2030, an official report said.

The Bangladesh Bank has relaxed rules on securing funds from pre-shipment credit schemes and the Export Development Fund so that exporters can avail soft loans to expedite shipments and make their international business more competitive.

The deadline for finishing the Padma bridge is going to be extended by more than a year largely due to the pandemic.

The government may consider another stimulus package for garment exporters such that they can pay workers’ wages of August, said Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal yesterday.

The government has revised upwards the allocation for two projects at a time when it is strict about approving funds amid drastic fall in revenue because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The government has extended policy support to garment exporting factories falling under the small and medium enterprise (SME) category to improve their competitiveness during this time of the coronavirus pandemic.

Cabinet ministers cannot spend more than $700 in entertainment purposes and $250 for other expenses during their official trips abroad as the government has moved to consolidate its expenditures under development and revenue budgets.

Record remittance earnings and foreign currency reserves are among a few positive takeaways for the government in an otherwise painful fiscal year as the devastating coronavirus pandemic pushed revenue collection to an unprecedented fall and exports to collapse.

Classified loans in the banking sector rose 3.9 per cent quarter-to-quarter to Tk 96,117 crore in June largely because of a higher volume of risky assets at private and state-run specialised lenders.

The government would hold talks with Chinese officials tomorrow as part of its desperate efforts to give impetus to the mega projects held up by the coronavirus pandemic.

The plan to offload an additional 15.2 per cent shares of state-run Rupali Bank has been revived after a delay caused by the coronavirus pandemic and the lender’s preoccupation in disbursing stimulus packages.

Inflation fell 49 basis points to 5.53 per cent in July compared to a month earlier, led by the fall in food prices.

Manufacturing activity in Bangladesh dropped as much as 28.78 per cent in April from a month earlier, official figures showed, in a first glimpse of the major blow the coronavirus pandemic dished out to the economy.

Youth unemployment in Bangladesh may more than double in 2020 if the country takes six months to contain the coronavirus pandemic, which has caused economic output and demand to fall drastically, said a new report.

The government has directed ministries and divisions to pick high-priority projects from the list of the unapproved schemes in the annual development programme as development work has been hamstrung by revenue shortage caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

The government has distributed cash support among 35 lakh beneficiaries rendered poor because of the coronavirus pandemic after preparing a database through multi-layer scrutiny of the people who needed it most.

The financial regulators and the government organisations are still struggling to resolve the much-talked five financial scams in the country as the embezzled fund worth Tk 18,253 crore are yet to be recovered.

The planning ministry yesterday expressed disappointment over frequent amendments in projects, one after another missed deadlines, and the directors’ absence at project sites.

Bangladesh’s investment to gross domestic product (GDP) ratio rose in the just-concluded fiscal year, data from the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics showed on Tuesday, in what can be viewed as an inexplicable development as most indicators were pointing towards a contrary scenario.