Day: November 20, 2023

Bangladesh has been enjoying a high percentage of the work-age population for some time now. But as the population growth rate decelerates, concerns about how long Bangladesh will enjoy this high work-age population have been raised. So how will this slowdown impact our labour market? How do we make the best of this demographic dividend until the work-age population dwindles and dependency increases, and how long do we have? The average population growth rate now stands at 1.22 per cent;...

To lessen the sufferings of the poor and marginalized people as the essential commodities have skyrocketed, the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB) has recently started selling some kitchen ingredients at fair price. Will TCB be successful in the hapless ones? If TCB wants to go for large-scale market intervention, it will need huge investment. It seems like an ambitious task. One need not go far to find these low-income people. They can be found in the long queue in front...

Musab Younis : When the Israeli defence minister declared on 9 October a “complete siege” in which “no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel” would be allowed into blockaded Gaza, and called its 2.3 million inhabitants “human animals”, there was not a single protest from an official in a western capital. It is easy to see Palestinians as standing alone against Israel’s military onslaught. Egypt and Israel, at peace since 1980, jointly blockade Gaza. In recent years, the region’s...

Md Ashraf Hossain : Bangladesh’s drug policy in the early eighties boosted up the local pharmaceutical industry very fast. The policy barred production of vitamins to foreign owned companies. Price approval from government drug administration was made mandatory for essential drugs. Production, marketing and storing of the chemicals which were sold as medicine but were not necessary for treatment of any diseases were banned. Marketing of drugs in generic names was made mandatory and marketing in trade names was barred....