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- Blog Post
Bangladesh: A Looming Debt Trap?
- Dr Selim Raihan
- Jun 1, 2025
Bangladesh’s external debt doubled since 2017 to stand at approximately $100 billion in 2024. This accelerated growth indicates a significant turn in the country’s economic direction. Most of this borrowing has gone towards financing large-scale infrastructure projects, supported by bilateral [....]
- Blog Post
Empowering Bangladesh’s Private Sector: Three Post-LDC Strategies
- Dr Selim Raihan
- Apr 30, 2025
The domestic private sector is the pillar of Bangladesh’s economic growth, job generation, and export competitiveness. While the country is graduating from the LDC status in 2026 and targets to be an upper-middle-income country in the future, the development of private sector capabilities is a prerequisite [....]
- Blog Post
Navigating Global Trade Turbulence: Bangladesh’s Strategic Pathway
- Dr Selim Raihan
- Apr 7, 2025
There are several emerging trends in international trade and investment. First, there are ongoing trends of fragmentation of trade and reorganization of geopolitics. The growing US-China, US-Canada, and US-Mexico trade war is compelling trade diversification and regionalisation. The “China+1” approach [....]
- Blog Post
Unpacking Bangladesh’s Economic Resilience
- Dr Selim Raihan
- Mar 5, 2025
Economic resilience, defined as the ability of an economy to quickly rebound from shocks while remaining stable and growing over the long term, is one of the most important determinants of a country’s ability to resist internal and exogenous shocks. For Bangladesh [....]
- Blog Post
Waning Foreign Investment: A Wake-Up Call for Policymakers in Bangladesh
- Dr Selim Raihan
- Feb 2, 2025
Bangladesh has struggled to attract substantial foreign direct investment (FDI), reflected in its low FDI as a percentage of GDP compared to regional peers. In 2023, Bangladesh’s FDI to GDP ratio was only 0.4%, while Vietnam’s was 4.3%. In that year, Vietnam attracted around 39 billion [....]
