News

Scheduled banks are set to launch the much-talked about 9% interest rate on all types of lending, barring credit cards, from Wednesday under the instructions of the Bangladesh Bank (BB).

The economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic could drive an additional 11 million people into poverty in East Asia and the Pacific unless “urgent action” is taken, the World Bank warned in a report released Monday.

The Trump administration is prepared to lift sanctions on Venezuela in support of a new proposal to form a transitional government representing allies of both Nicolas Maduro and opposition leader Juan Guaido, US officials said.

The newly-introduced ‘CNI-DSE Select Index (CDSET)’, comprising well performing companies, tumbled 12 per cent in the just three months amid virus outbreak.

Britons made over 79 million extra grocery shopping trips in the four weeks to March 21 year-on-year as they stocked their “pandemic pantries”, driving a 20.5 per cent jump in supermarket sales, industry data published on Tuesday showed.

The bank said precise growth forecasts were difficult, given the rapidly changing situation, but its baseline now called for growth in developing economies in the region to slow to 2.1% in 2020, and to -0.5% in a lower-case scenario, compared to estimated growth of 5.8% in 2019.

The value of readymade garment export orders cancelled or put on hold by global buyers due to the worldwide coronavirus outbreak exceeded $3 billion till Monday, exporters said.

Pressure is building on Amazon and other delivery firms to improve protections for workers worried about getting infected with coronavirus.

Stocks edged up in the outgoing week, snapping a four-week free-fall, thanks to regulatory move to boost the ailing capital market.

Some 45 Bangladesh missions abroad have failed to achieve their respective export targets for the July-February period of this fiscal, according to the Export Promotion Bureau.