Ahsan Habib

Bangladesh’s stock market has been going through a bear run for the last two months despite petering out of election-linked uncertainty, signaling that the worries about the macroeconomic challenges are far from over.

Bangladesh is already one of the top 10 markets for Bata Shoe but its Chief Executive Officer Sandeep Kataria thinks the country offers further growth opportunities for the multinational company.

Initially, it is the general stock investors who might be at the receiving end of the process while the loan defaulters, whose misdeeds are largely responsible for Padma Bank’s current misfortunes, might come out victorious.

Since the interest rates may rise further, the companies are taking steps to quickly pay back loans using funds from alternative sources, according to business leaders.

The profitability of the banking sector in Bangladesh is the lowest in South Asia due to the prevalence of higher non-performing loans, lower efficiency, and an elevated level of costs of funds.

Experts and industry people blame higher inflationary pressure confronting a larger section of the population, especially low-income households, since May 2022, for the slower growth since their purchasing power has eroded significantly.

Bangladesh is turning into a manufacturing hub for consumer electronics thanks to its affordable wage structure, expertise in information technology and light engineering industries, according to Singer Bangladesh.

Some think that the existing supply order (SO) system is one of the reasons for the spike in the prices of essential goods such as sugar and edible oil simply because prices increase each time the document changes hands.

The narrow streets of Old Dhaka’s Moulvibazar hum with activity: commodity trading. On mobile phones, wholesalers fervently follow prices on trading floors in Chicago and London to bet on the local prices of sugar and edible oil. In and around tea stalls in this gloomy corner of Dhaka, even idle chats are centred around the price movement on the London Commodity Exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade, and the Bursa Malaysia.

The Bailey Road fire, which killed at least 46 people on the last night of February, once again points to the massive flaws in the safety system of businesses in the sprawling Dhaka city and highlights the urgency to ramp up monitoring and interventions to avoid preventable deaths.

The claim settlement rate in the insurance sector of Bangladesh has risen by more than four percentage points within the span of a single year although the ratio has remained far below the global average.

Entrepreneurs who have been finding it difficult to keep their head above water for the past two years owing to higher prices of energy, raw materials and massive depreciation of the local currency are staring at another blow as their cost of production is set to rise following the hike in electricity tariffs.

Insurance premium growth decelerated in 2023 as people’s purchasing power eroded amid higher inflationary pressure, despite the sector’s immense potential in a country that has one of the lowest penetration rates in the world.

The World Bank has recommended Bangladesh put in place a unified exchange rate and tighten monetary policy further in order to tame persistently high inflationary pressure and end the foreign exchange crisis.

Some institutional investors sold their 32 percent stake, or 3.23 crore shares, of Khan Brothers PP Woven Bag Industries Ltd in the second half of 2023, according to the market regulator.

Listed companies should be categorised based on the quality of their governance instead of their dividends as governance has a long-term impact for investors, said Ahsanur Rahman, CEO of BRAC EPL Stock Brokerage.

Retail investors’ stakes in the share market of Bangladesh have nearly halved in the last 12 years as they are increasingly losing their appetite for stocks owing to a lacklustre market performance.

Brokerage firms in Bangladesh are increasingly encouraging stock investors to invest in treasury bonds as the risk-free securities are offering lucrative returns, which are higher than the deposit rate in the banking sector.

Shwapno, the leading retail chain brand in Bangladesh, started making operating profit, but its loss accumulated to Tk 1,661 crore over the past 15 years largely due to mammoth loans that are pushing up finance costs every year.

Bangladesh’s largest drug producer, Square Pharmaceuticals, saw increased sales from its Kenya project in the second quarter of fiscal year (FY) 2023-24.