Banking & Commodity

A staggering nearly 22% of Bangladesh’s total households are grappling with moderate or severe food insecurity, highlighting a concerning trend where one in five households lacks reliable access to sufficient, affordable, and nutritious food. Rangpur division witnesses 29.98 out of 100 households facing food insecurity, with Sylhet emerging as the …

Interest rate against borrowing from banks has surged to 11.89% as the Bangladesh Bank raised the benchmark rate, known as Six-Month Moving Average Rate of Treasury Bill (SMART) for the month of January. The benchmark interest rate in December-end was raised to 8.14% from the previous month’s 7.72% and the …

About 21.91 per cent of Bangladeshi households are facing moderate food insecurity while 0.83 per cent are severe during the period from January 2022 to December 2023. Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) on Sunday revealed this report, the first in the country titled ‘Food Security Statistics 2023’, based on the …

Bangladesh’s economy was beset by enormous challenges in 2023, including soaring inflation and depleting forex reserves, but optimism is in the air with the beginning of the new year as some key indicators are showing signs of improvement. Bangladeshis faced the double whammy of runaway inflation and skyrocketing prices of …

River canals in the southern region of Bangladesh are packed with vendors that have seemingly built their dreams around the production of hog plums, locally known as ‘amra’. Trawlers and hundreds of boats laden with hog plums on their way to Dhaka and Chattogram have become a common sight in …

The refiners on Monday requested the government to hike retail prices of packaged sugar by 20% to Tk150 a kilogram, due to high import costs amid rise in its international rates and higher cost for US dollar. They want to sell sugar at this rate to the consumers from June …

Interest caps on banks’ lending will be lifted from July as Bangladesh Bank on Monday issued guidelines. However, the new lending-rate mechanism is based on benchmark reference rate effective from next month. Under the new lending regime, the central bank will fix a reference rate based on the moving average …

Bangladesh Bank Governor Abdur Rouf Talukder considered Moody’s recent downgrade on some local banks as a geopolitical move rather than economic indicator. The central bank governor was responding to a question during the launch of the half-yearly monetary policy statement (MPS) starting next month. He said the international credit rating …

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is working on a platform for central bank digital currencies (CDBCs) to enable transactions between countries, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Monday. FE “CBDCs should not be fragmented national propositions… To have more efficient and fairer transactions we need systems that connect countries: …

The Bangladesh Bank has decided to launch a taka-rupee debit card in the country in September to allow travellers to make payments through the card at home as well as in India. The card will allow individuals to make local payments as well as settle payments in the Indian rupee …