Sheikh Selim
When I set out to commission this cycle of the Bulletin’s Economy and Policy Governance section, my aim was not to generate a running commentary on whichever ministry statement or IMF mission dominated the week’s headlines. Bangladesh has no shortage of economic news coverage. What it conspicuously lacks are sustained, theory literate analysis that treats economic policy as an interconnected system rather than a parade of unconnected events. That was the brief I gave our contributors, and reflecting on the thirty-seven pieces published over the past 16 weeks, I believe the collection largely fulfils it.
The Shape of the Coverage
The pieces organize into roughly nine overlapping groups. The largest, six articles, centers on fiscal policy and the national budget, tracking the FY2026 27 cycle across several installments (Budget 2026, Some Important Questions; Defensive in Arithmetic, Ambitious in Reform; The Price of Inaction; Green Budget 2026), alongside a retrospective on FY2025 26 and a standalone piece on the government’s structural dependence on bank borrowing. This focus was intentional, since the budget cycle is the moment stated priorities meet real arithmetic, and we wanted that tested at every stage.
The second largest group, seven articles, tackled regional and geopolitical political economy, arguably the most ambitious grouping. It included pieces on reviving SAARC under Bangladeshi leadership, recalibrating ties with Pakistan, comparative studies of rural growth and corruption across Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nigeria, Bangladesh’s exposure to Middle East instability, Dr Khalilur Rahman’s UN presidency, and how Indian elections in West Bengal might affect Bangladesh, together showing domestic choices cannot be understood apart from the region.
Labor, human capital, and productivity contributed four pieces, on female labor participation, education labor market mismatches, the true cost of outward migration, and gender, education, and climate resilience, all deliberately medium term in framing. Trade, investment climate, and financial governance produced eleven articles, spanning import cost structures, Chinese involvement at Mongla Port, the EU Partnership Agreement, Bangladesh Bank’s lending policies, illicit financial outflows, and bureaucratic friction undermining investment.
Finally, sectoral pieces, four on sports economy, social media’s declining influencer economy, jute export revival, and tourism development, alongside four on urban and infrastructure economics covering Dhaka’s traffic, Shahjalal Airport’s transit hub potential, Rangpur’s untapped potential, and the Teesta and Padma barrage projects, rounded out the section’s scope.
Immediate Concerns Set Against Longer Horizons
I structured the commissioning around a deliberate split. Roughly half the pieces respond to something immediate: a budget deadline, a central bank circular, a World Bank forecast revision, an investment summit whose headline numbers did not match its ambitions. These pieces matter because policy debate in Bangladesh often moves faster than sober analysis can follow, and somebody needs to hold ministries and regulators to the claims they make in real time.
The other half is intentionally forward looking. Articles on Rangpur’s untapped potential, on turning Dhaka’s airport into a regional hub, on reviving jute, on SAARC’s revival prospects, and on the productivity dividend from closing the gender gap in the workforce are not responses to this month’s news cycle. They are wagers on what will matter in five or ten years, written now so that when the moment arrives, policymakers and readers already possess a framework rather than a blank page.
Where Economic Theory Earned Its Place
What sets several of these pieces apart from typical Bangladeshi economic commentary is a willingness to name and apply underlying economic theory rather than simply cite statistics. The piece on Dhaka’s congestion pricing draws directly on Pigouvian logic around negative externalities, using London’s model as a genuine comparison rather than a talking point. The article on women’s labor force participation applies human capital theory and occupational segregation economics to explain why participation alone doesn’t guarantee growth dividends.
Similarly, the corruption and informality comparison with Nigeria draws on institutional economics and informal sector literature to question whether governance indices truly capture economic dynamism, while the investment climate pieces use transaction cost economics to show how procedural delay functions as a hidden tax on capital.
This matters specifically because most short form policy writing in Bangladesh, whether journalism or think tank output, tends toward description rather than analysis, while theory heavy work remains confined to academic journals few read. By requiring contributors to ground arguments in identifiable frameworks while still writing accessibly within fifteen to twenty minutes, we aimed to bridge rigorous economics and public debate. This proved a harder standard to commission for, evident in the care contributors took explaining concepts before applying them, and I consider it the section’s most distinctive achievement this quarter, setting the bar for what comes next.
The Next 16 Weeks
Several threads from this cycle demand a sequel rather than a conclusion, and a few new ones deserve their own commission. The FY2026 to 27 budget’s implementation phase will need scrutiny once revenue collection numbers start arriving against the National Board of Revenue’s targets, since ambition on paper rarely survives contact with collection capacity. We also intend a piece on the IMF programme’s next review, given how heavily monetary and exchange rate policy still depends on that relationship.
The banking sector deserves closer attention, particularly the pace of nonperforming loan resolution once the loan restructuring window closes at the end of June, and what that implies for credit availability to small and medium enterprises. On trade, we are commissioning a piece on Bangladesh’s preparation for eventual graduation from least developed country status and the tariff and market access consequences that follow, alongside a follow up on whether the European Union Partnership and Cooperation Agreement moves from initialing toward ratification. Energy sector economics, an area underrepresented this cycle, will receive dedicated coverage: the fiscal burden of capacity payments, the economics of the renewable transition, and gas import dependence heading into winter demand.
We also plan a return to labor economics, this time examining domestic wage growth against persistent inflation, and a piece assessing early results from the skills and training reforms discussed in this cycle’s Rewiring the Skills Economy article. On governance, expect analysis of civil service pay commission recommendations as they move toward implementation, and a piece examining procurement reform, given how often that theme surfaced indirectly in this cycle’s bureaucracy and corruption articles.
Finally, given how much regional political economy shaped this quarter, we will commission at least one piece tracking how Bangladesh’s evolving relationships with India, Pakistan and China are translating, or failing to translate, into measurable trade and investment outcomes rather than diplomatic statements alone.
