If we can further liberalise our trade by reducing tariffs and non-tariff barriers and by removing age-old regulations, our growth will exceed even 7 percent.

Bangladesh, with the support and vision of the Bangladesh Bank, has seen remarkable progress in Mobile Financial Services (MFS) in recent years.

Understandably, a significant amount will be required by poor countries as they are the most vulnerable to climate change. Additionally, they are also engulfed with environmental problems such as pollution and resource degradation which make their development unsustainable.

In early September, I travelled to New York for the Sustainable Development Summit at the UN. There, a sweeping new global development agenda was adopted by 193 countries, including Bangladesh and my own country, the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Allocating more funds for training, research, technology, travel, and after-hour education will not only add more human values to the banking profession, but also make our banking sector more productive in the long-run.

Despite an increase in the total working age of the female population, women's contribution to GDP is only about 30 percent. This is not only due to their greater involvement in the less productive informal sector but also because they are engaged mostly in unpaid activities within the household which are not counted in the traditional measure of GDP.

Allowing young women to plan whether and when they want to start their families gives them the option to stay in school, join the workforce or pursue other dreams. This virtuous cycle that begins with empowering one woman can lift entire communities out of poverty.

Being in the business of measuring poverty is a challenge for the World Bank. If poverty declines, critics accuse us of trying to showcase our success. If it rises, they say we are ensuring that we stay in business. And if it stays the same, they accuse us of trying to avoid these two charges.

THE ratification of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals that will be the world's roadmap for development over the next 15 years is an important...

The rising trend of foreign currency loans availed by the private sector is a relatively new phenomenon in Bangladesh since access to international markets was liberalised in 2008.

Protecting the rights of children and providing the essentials for their development must be part of the definition of poverty reduction.

Industrial policy needs to address issues of education and skill development for facilitating higher capabilities for export diversification, attracting FDI and integrating with the global value chain.

The successful implementation of the NSSS will provide a strong basis for Bangladesh to extend proper social security to its poor and vulnerable populations. It recognises the differences in risks at different stages of the life cycle and provides support to various demographic groups.

Sanchayapatra – a supposed welfare instrument – is actually a Trojan horse that threatens the future of our development budget, and thus reduces growth potentials for the nation. The higher the sale of NSCs, the higher the future interest liability which will definitely eat up a bigger pie of our budget, reducing the share of the Annual Development Programme (ADP).

October 15 was the International Rural Women Day. The first International Day of Rural Women was observed on October 15, 2008.

THE winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in the field of economics, Angus Deaton, professor of Economics and International Affairs of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, spent his career working on consumption, poverty and inequality.

Unfortunately, the world's rich countries currently are making things worse. Foreign aid – transfers from rich countries to poor countries – has much to its credit, particularly in terms of health care, with many people alive today who would otherwise be dead. But foreign aid also undermines the development of local state capacity.

What will kill RMG in Bangladesh? Trans-Pacific Partnership or security fears? It may certainly be the second one and not the first. To begin with, the full text of the TPP is not yet available.

Given that Bangladesh has the lowest debt-GDP ratio in the region (29 percent), when compared to Sri Lanka (73 percent), Pakistan (67 percent) and India (65 percent), we can easily afford investing another $10 to 20 billion in our hugely inadequate infrastructure.

By barring MNOs from starting their own MFS, BB effectively promoted interoperability. This encouraged 25 million subscribers to sign up in four short years. bKash, for example, had signed up three times as many customers (19 million) in four years as EasyPaisa operating in Pakistan for about seven years.