Regular power outages are prompting Bangaladesh to build two new coal-fired power plants. The Rampal plant is the furthest along and is scheduled to become operational by 2021.
The plants are planned to be built near the Sundarbans, the world’s largest single tract of mangrove forest, home to tigers, freshwater dolphins, and hundreds of other wildlife species.
Critics ranging from local communities and scientists to banks and UNESCO are critical of the plants’ proposed location near the Sundarbans, which they say will harm the region’s wildlife and human communities.
Bangladesh, regarded by many as the nation most vulnerable to the impacts of global climate change, is on track to construct two coal-fired power plants that critics say are dangerously close to the world’s largest...
Coastal Bangladesh is an unlikely place for a fresh water crisis. Mighty rivers carve paths through the landscape, all the way from melting Himalayan glaciers in the north to the Bay of Bengal in the south. Viewed from above, the countryside is an extensive patchwork of agricultural ponds, glinting in the sunlight.
[caption id="attachment_21916" align="alignleft" width="650"]
As more farmers convert freshwater fields into shrimp farms the salt from seawater seeps further inland. Photograph: Joanna Lovatt[/capt...
In yet another indication of improving Indo-Bangladesh ties, reports on Monday claimed that India may soon win a contract to build a port for Bangladesh, while the latter cancelled a deep sea port which was to be built by China earlier.
As per a ToI report, New Delhi has expressed its keenness in developing the neighbour’s newest deep sea port - Payra.
The move by India is significant as it is bound to take the bilateral ties between the two South
Asian neighbours to a new high.
Meanwhile, Japan is also expec...
Bangladesh's foreign exchange reserves edged down to nearly $27.14 billion by January-end from a record high of $27.49 billion in the previous month, but were up 23 percent from a year earlier, the central bank said on Monday.
A senior central bank official attributed the drop in January to a rise in imports; the reserves
are enough to cover more than seven months of imports.
Garment exports and remittances from Bangladeshis working overseas - two mainstay revenue generators - have helped foreign exchange reserves grow s...
Investors looking for alternatives amid the global slump would do well to check out Bangladesh.
Exports rose to a record last month even as other regional economies reported continued declines, and economists say shipments will increase as Americans rush to buy cheap clothes. Bangladesh’s central bank forecasts inflation will slow and the World Bank predicts growth will accelerate to 6.7 percent this year, making it one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.
“Over the medium-to-long term, we are bullish on the growth prospects of Bangladesh’s industrial and export sectors,” Raphael Mok, Asia analyst at Fitch unit BMI Research, said by e-mail. “The country boasts a large and youthful population, as well as relatively low labor costs.”
The central bank of Bangladesh is launching a US$200 million fund to green the country’s clothing factories.
Governor Atiur Rahman trailed the initiative at a sustainable development conference in Dhaka last week.
The goal was “transforming Bangladesh into a fully fledged ‘green’ nation,” he told delegates, to stay competitive amid slowing global trade.
Following financial incentives to light Bangladeshi homes with solar power, it represents a scaling up of the bank’s green ambitions.
While it is not yet clear how, the fund is to shrink the carbon footprint of Bangladesh’s textile
