Dhaka, Bangladesh (BBN) - The BBN (Bangladesh Business News) has prepared the morning business round up compiling reports, published by different newspapers and news portals in Bangladesh.
Syndicate behind rice price hike: experts
Traders, despite bumper yield of paddy, have increased prices of rice on the pretext of the reinstatement of 28 per cent import duty on the staple. Market experts suspect a syndicate behind the recent hike of rice prices in the wake of the resumption of the import duty early this month to protect the local growers.
Warning against burdening banks
The financial sector of Bangladesh has developed a dangerous notion called 'mismatch of maturity', as short-term deposits are used for financing long-term investment here, eminent economist Dr. Rehman Sobhan opined on Sunday. "The entire burden of investment for structural change in the economy as well as the private sector has fallen on the commercial banks, which is very unusual and very dangerous," he cautioned.
Default loans pile up in new banks
Default loans at nine new private banks more than trebled to Tk 1,761 crore in the first quarter of 2018 from the same period a year ago mainly because of illicit lending practices, according to Bangladesh Bank data. The banks are Meghna, Midland, Modhumoti, NRB, NRB Commercial, NRB Global, Farmers, South Bangla Agriculture and Commerce, and Union.
Will government concessions help private banks survive?
In a bid to alleviate the financial crisis that the country’s banking sector is currently riddled with, the government has proposed to reduce the corporate tax rates for banks and financial institutions by 2.5 percentage points – bringing it down to 37.5% from the existing 40% for publicly listed institutions. Finance Minister AMA Muhith made the announcement during his budget speech on June 7, where he said this step was the latest in a series of initiatives the government had recently taken to reform the banking sector.
Bangladesh’s stocks extend winning spell for fourth day
Bangladesh’s stocks extended the winning streak for the fourth session on Sunday with key index of the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) crossing the 5,500-mark. DSEX, the prime index of the DSE, went up by 80.24 points or 1.47 percent to finish at 5,522 points.
ADP spend far away from target
Ministries and divisions face an uphill task in June as they will have to spend about one-third of the development budget in one month to reach the government's ambitious ADP target. In the first 11 months of the outgoing fiscal year, they together spent Tk 98,978 crore against the revised full-year allocation of Tk 157,594 crore for the annual development programme (ADP), according to the Implementation Monitoring & Evaluation Division (IMED).
EPB eyes $44.50b export target for next FY
The Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) has proposed setting the country's goods and service export target at US$ 44.50 billion for fiscal year (FY) 2018-19, officials said. It proposed fixing the merchandise export target at $ 40.0 billion, 7.14 per cent or $2.5 billion higher than that of the current FY's target of $ 37.5 billion.
Mobile subscriber growth halts in April
Growth of active mobile phone subscribers in Bangladesh witnessed a halt in April amid a slowdown in mobile phone operators’ SIM sales drives after the launch of 4G services by all but Teletalk in February this year. As per the latest Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission data, the number of active mobile phone subscribers inched up by 55,000 to 15.033 crore at the end of April from 15.028 crore at the end of March.
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