Finally Saarc member states signed the Saarc Framework Agreement on Energy Cooperation (Electricity) aimed at sharing and trading electricity among the member countries through a common grid. The Saarc leaders, however, failed to reach a consensus to sign the regional connectivity deal at the concluding session of the two-day long 18th Saarc Summit that adopted a 36-point declaration. After the signing ceremony of energy cooperation deal by the foreign ministers of the Saarc countries, Nepalese Prime Minister Sushil Koirala...

Bangladesh’s economy has maintained a healthy 6%-plus growth rate in past decade, despite global shocks. The country now needs to accelerate GDP growth to over 8% as well as maintain the present remittance growth to become a middle-income country by 2021, according to the editorial of the current ICCB News Bulletin (July-September 2014 issue) of International Chamber of Commerce-Bangladesh released today. Sustained growth has generated higher demand for improved infrastruc...

After wasting much valuable time, finance minister AMA Muhith last week inquired about soaring bad loans that rocked several government run banks since 2011 in the backdrop of a series of shady credit scams facilitated by lax monitoring. The finance minister also inquired about raising the lending rates by the banks to depict healthier balance sheets and Bangladesh Bank’s silence over the issue. In a directive issued last week, the finance minister asked the bank and financial institution division to let him know about the picture. Cri...

Thomas Hood’s 1843 poem Song of the Shirt is the title of ‘labour chronicler’ Jeremy Seabrook’s latest book. Hood’s poem, a scathing indictment of industrial Britain, was written in memory of Mrs. Biddell, a widowed seamstress caught in a debt trap, compelled to pawn the clothes she made in order to feed her malnourished child. Seabrook picks the weft thread of Hood’s poem and weaves a grim, unforgiving human tapestry of Bangladesh’s garment industry. His book is a bleak anthem to a country on the throes of an inhuman globalisation process, its poor subjected to never-ending penitential labour.