As middle and low-income segments of society struggle against the backdrop of a severe cost-of-living crisis, the surge in aggregate demand ahead of Eid-ul-Fitr poses a further hurdle for many striving to celebrate the festival.

Despite garment exporters transforming their factories, international buyers are not paying a premium for the products they source from the eco-friendly factories

The midday sun blazes down on SM Sourcing, the world’s highest-rated green garment factory in Gazipur’s Konabari. About 60 workers on one of the factory floors are busy making export-quality frocks as they hurriedly finish their work ahead of lunch. Despite the summer heat outside, only a few ceiling fans are switched on and the factory floor is quite cool.

In December, a historic deal marked the start of a new era for port management across the country as Bangladesh welcomed its first foreign port operator.

If you get a chance to take a stroll inside the present-day terminal of Chattogram Port, a world of mechanical marvels awaits.

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.

On a Wednesday afternoon, we were walking along one of the dusty roads of Dhaka that everyone can easily imagine – a path littered with debris and puddles of murky water.

While a walk through Mitford is an unforgettable treat for the olfactory senses, there are ill winds threatening to blow over those sweet scents and the businesses that produce them.

While Bangladesh’s garment sector struggles  to transition from basic products to high-end items, too many companies are going in for the same international contracts, intensifying competition among themselves.

Walk down the road in Savar, Gazipur or Narayanganj in the morning hours and you will see a long line of workers heading to work.

Mirpur was best known as a garment manufacturing hub, a crime zone with rough roads, dirty alleyways, rundown buses, a capital of slums called home by apparel workers and a poor township marked by nondescript houses.