I'm mostly optimistic about inflation in Bangladesh coming down. Oil prices are down but LNG prices remain elevated because of these damned Europeans. There are also rate cuts in major economies by the end of this year.
But the BB projection of 7-8% by winter seems ridiculous. Last I checked the BB interest rate is still lower than the official inflation rate. Meaning real interest rate is still negative. BB has not been aggressive about increasing interest rate.
On a positive note, the difference between the official exchange rate and the black market rate is less than 1%. This should bring in more remittances (which you mentioned) and export earnings.
Do you think Bangladesh will be able to join ASEAN in the coming years? I'm generally pro India and pro USA but I still think we should have an alliance of medium sized countries in Asia as the world transiions to a multi polar world.
Agree and hope so. Bangladesh also needs to get bilateral and multilateral trade agreements. As a card-carrying neoliberal, I am all for multilateral free trade. Sadly, we are in a world of managed trade now.
We can't control what other people do but we can control what we do. Besides trade policy is overrated anyway. We can make much more progress by focusing on local deregulation and privatisation.
Since 2021 there has been reports by big businesses about inadequate gas supply but relatively fewer complaints about electricity supply. That would be strange since most of our electricity is produced via gas anyway. There was some substitution to coal but aggregate electricity demand also seems to have stalled for 3 years but there has been reasonable economic growth during this period. Are all the numbers faked? To an extent probably.
Then I read this and wondered if a similar trend is taking place in Bangladesh.
I'm mostly optimistic about inflation in Bangladesh coming down. Oil prices are down but LNG prices remain elevated because of these damned Europeans. There are also rate cuts in major economies by the end of this year.
But the BB projection of 7-8% by winter seems ridiculous. Last I checked the BB interest rate is still lower than the official inflation rate. Meaning real interest rate is still negative. BB has not been aggressive about increasing interest rate.
On a positive note, the difference between the official exchange rate and the black market rate is less than 1%. This should bring in more remittances (which you mentioned) and export earnings.
Do you think Bangladesh will be able to join ASEAN in the coming years? I'm generally pro India and pro USA but I still think we should have an alliance of medium sized countries in Asia as the world transiions to a multi polar world.
Agree and hope so. Bangladesh also needs to get bilateral and multilateral trade agreements. As a card-carrying neoliberal, I am all for multilateral free trade. Sadly, we are in a world of managed trade now.
We can't control what other people do but we can control what we do. Besides trade policy is overrated anyway. We can make much more progress by focusing on local deregulation and privatisation.
Since 2021 there has been reports by big businesses about inadequate gas supply but relatively fewer complaints about electricity supply. That would be strange since most of our electricity is produced via gas anyway. There was some substitution to coal but aggregate electricity demand also seems to have stalled for 3 years but there has been reasonable economic growth during this period. Are all the numbers faked? To an extent probably.
Then I read this and wondered if a similar trend is taking place in Bangladesh.
https://open.substack.com/pub/exponentialview/p/the-rooftop-revolution?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=o2bbq
What do you think?