Weekly Bangladesh Policy Outlook: Analysis, Truth, Debate.
I was a young researcher assembling a PhD proposal for American universities when the towers came down in September 2001. Twenty-five years later, I can still feel the weight of that week, and it is heavier now in memory than it was in the moment. What I watched on television was an attack on a…
Read More “Twenty-Five Years After the Towers Fell: An Economist’s Reckoning” »
Every few years, Bangladesh performs the same ritual. A pay commission is formed, a new scale is announced, government employees celebrate, and newspapers publish headline percentages that sound, on first reading, like genuine progress. The approval of the 9th National Pay Scale in 2026, the most ambitious revision in the country’s history, followed this script…
Read More “The Ninth Pay Scale Is Not the Victory It Looks Like on Paper” »
We do not run this bulletin to chase headlines, but some developments earn the exclusion. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan’s September 2025 Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement (the first stage pact, an Article 5-style pact declaring an attack on one an attack on both) was, even then, more than routine diplomatic choreography. What has followed has only…
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…
When I first conceived of The Oniket Bulletin (TOB, hereafter), the idea was a fairly stubborn one. Bangladesh, a country of unusual policy complexity, remarkable economic dynamism, and equally noteworthy public debate, did not have a dedicated, peer reviewed, weekly platform where that debate could be conducted with rigor, speed, and accessibility all at once….
Introduction In the aftermath of the 1971 Liberation War, Bangladesh was written off by most development economists as one of the least viable economies on earth, a country so poor and fragile it earned the label “basket case,” a phrase of disputed origin but one that captured the era’s bleak outlook. Five decades on, that…
The United Kingdom’s transformation into the leading Western center for sukuk offers a compelling lesson for emerging Muslim majority economies seeking to build capital market infrastructure rather than simply issue debt. London never attempted to compete with Malaysia or the Gulf states on issuance volume. Instead, it built the legal scaffolding, listing venues, professional expertise…
Read More “Following London’s Blueprint: Can Bangladesh Build South Asia’s Sukuk Hub?” »
Bangladesh Bank has decided to maintain its export cash incentive scheme for FY2026-27, keeping all 43 product categories and their existing rates (ranging from 0.30 percent to 10 percent) unchanged. This has been framed as a deliberate policy of continuity, meant to sustain export momentum amid shifting global demand. Yet when examined through the lenses…
Read More “Macroeconomic impact analysis of Bangladesh Bank’s Export Cash Incentive Scheme 2026” »
The gradual recession of floodwaters across Cox’s Bazar, following eight consecutive days of intense rainfall, represents only a temporary respite rather than a definitive resolution of the crisis. Although water levels in the district’s two principal rivers, the Matamuhuri and the Bakkhali, are returning to normal, and meteorological forecasts indicate no immediate prospect of prolonged…
Read More “Flood Disaster Management in Bangladesh: Lessons from Cox’s Bazar” »
According to World Bank statistics, 21% of adults worldwide have no banking inclusion, meaning they do not use any bank account and conduct all transactions using cash or unsafe methods. This population essentially has no financial literacy. The challenge is even more complex in Bangladesh. Only 36% of adult women and 65% of adult men…
Read More “Simplifying and Improving Financial Inclusion in Rural Bangladesh” »
