"student protest which rocked bangladesh since july the 1st led to the resignation of the former prime minister sheikh hasina. well, this has battered the domestic economy with losses estimated billions of dollars. what is the economic future of bangladesh, given that no democratically elected government has been formed as of yet. what about the claims made by the former prime minister sheikh hasina that the bangladeshi coup was us revenge for military-based refusal? hi, i'm kavi. welcome to economic

divide. some of the highlights of this program. we're going to take a look at the bangladeshi crisis. the nobel laurat unit is in charge of the interim governments and what we can see from this is whether uh there has been any truth to the claims made by hasena that there have been us interference. the immediate goal, restore law and order. unemployment problem is big there. 67 of 67% of bangladeshies 170 million people are aged. to 64 and you have 40% age 15 to 24 not working with stagnant job growth and the key industries in bangladesh, garment manufacturing, that's one of them, but is played by low wages, which is actually help build the industry, and there are western companies that continue the practice of slave labor.

not long ago, bangladesh was hailed as economic miracle. it's focused on exporting textiles and apparel delivered rapid growth, lifting millions out of poverty and winning the country's prime minister, sheikh hasina, fame and admiration. now the country is in crisis mode, is combatting steep inflation and joblessness. after hasina's bloody overthrow through a student movement, muhammad yunus has been chosen to lead bangladesh an entreim capacity. he is noble laureat and microfinance pioneer, banker and economist.

is said to witness the swearing in of an interm government following the abrupt end of the awami league regime. next, us deep state to asset will now lead bangladesh, who is muhammad yunis? he has been described as an entrepreneur, economist and a civil society leader, however, he's also been accused of corruption. he's also been the recipient of us state scholarships funded by cia fronts. also won the nobel peace prize in 2006. ashok fellow is sponsored by ashok foundation. which gets its funding from the ford foundation and this is not all, he has been constantly supported by important personalities in the us, it seemed as if the establishment was ready to wors in its relationship with the sheikh hasina government for just one citizen. who is mohammed yunus, the man who will had the intern government of bangladesh after sheikh hasina government was unceremoniously dislodged following violent coup. he is described as an entrepreneur, economist and a civil society leader, however is also been accused. corruption, he has also been a

recipient of us state scholarships funded by cia fronce, he also won the nobel peace prize in 2006. the circular economy of bill and hillary clinton, unis presume. the new leader of bangladesh now or has ran micro edit bank, a scam, while his group got millions of dollars of aid from the us government, the world bank, etc. then he foddled some of those dollars to the clinton foundation. and finally, for all the clap trap about booming bangladesh, it is high levels of unemployment, widespread inequality, and sweat shop exploitation, extractive foreign investments don't impress. if the economy fails to improve people's lives, screw trickle down, they will come out on the streets. okay, that was mixture of some of the people's views when it comes to bangladesh. let me introduce our guests for our first segment of the q&a. first we have ahmed mushfiq mubarak joining us. he's a professor of economics and management at yall university. ahmad, welcome to economic

divide. thank you for having me on your show. all right, this prisignation of sheikhsena as a prime minister, and then you have the subsequent takeover it said by the military. it does didn't really spell a comfortable environment when it comes to the economy or investments uh or anything along those lines, you have problems of liquidity and forex reserves. what is the state of bangladesh's economy? so uh first it was a dictatorial regime uh that was pushed out not by the military but by student protesters, so this was entirely uh student and youth. led the protests and this regime had been in power for almost 15 years and there was a lot of increase in corruption during that period under this autocratic regime and that has definitely posed some problems, emerging

problems in our economy, so bangladesh had been doing quite well, there was a lot of one of some of the highest growth rates in the world, about 6% or more in gdp capital growth. but um since the pandemic and especially after the russia ukraine war which caused you know global increases in fuel prices, that led to some currency balance the payments crisis, and bangladesh had to negotiate a loan with the imf in january of 2023, over four billion dollars, to stabilize. now what's been happening is that with the increasing corruption, there's been pressure on the macro economy and on government debt ' so for example, there's been big infrastructure projects, building metro line, building highways, but in all these different infrastructure projects with corruption there was a huge increase in cost of construction right, some of the highest cost of construction in the world right, so

now that is dangerous to the economy, just like accumulating government debt was dangerous to say the greek economy, and so the big challenge right now, is to ensure macroeconomic balance and actually get a proper accounting of the health of the financial sector. in the previous autocratic regime there wasn't sufficient transparency of that in that. so that's one one big challenge and then immediately given that we are in a situation of political turmoil right now, we need to get back the confidence of imported from our country. bangladesh produces lot of readymade garments right, and we need to make sure that the buyers especially in... the united states and in the european union, so they continue to think of bangladesh as a stable, safe source for for products, and similarly the other big earning, foreign exchange earnings mechanism in bangladesh is remittances from migrants, we need to make sure that those opportunities remain open, so those are some of the

important economic challenges and i think a smaller one is that under the previous artic regime lot of money was siphened off, stolen from the country. "and we need to put in place mechanisms to get some of that money back and use it for uh national development. okay, let's bring in ahmed mushfiq mubarak. he's the professor of economics and management at yall university. welcome to economic divide. thanks for having me. um, looking at the resignation that has happened, that's obviously thrown bangladesh into a state of political turmoil, but bangladesh's economy uh was facing that in one form or another, even though it has very um high gdp growth in some respects. uh, what is your view? the state of bangladesh's economy? yeah, thank you very much. this is very very valid question at this moment, so so if we look back little bit of the bangladesh economy, then the last 22 to 26 months, the

economy was suffering from high food and non-flued inflation and at the same time, the wage average wage increase was less than the inflation and but there are allegations that the numbers that are produced, the public numbers produced by the previous government. is not accurate, so there are a lot of data integrity issue in the economic statistics and the and the economic kpis, so the reality is the economy was already suffering from from crisis, as you said the reserve has crunched significantly over last two years and the currency. that is called taka, local currency call taka has been devaluated by more than 30% of the compared to the us

dollar, which is the significant standard currency in bangladesh, so as the interium government has has takeover and they are led by nobel laureot, renown professor dr. mohammed yunus who has been significantly praised for his works in in poverty reduction around the world and also he is one of the pioneer for social business, we would see that the country will experience little bit better - macroeconomic stability, because there there was serious issue from banking mismanagement, from illicit money flows, money laundering and and majority of the chunk of the of the private sector loan is non-performing and those numbers is is around 23 to 24. person. it's time now for the inf

news section of the program. first up, the legalization of crypto currency. this happened in russia where it legalized cryptocurrency mining. now the new law introduced several key concepts. it included digital currency mining, mining pools and also mining infrastructure operators. cryptocurrency mining will now be: recognized as part of a turnover rather than the issuance of digital currency, and that's how it went down in russia. next, the global uh meltdown that we have seen, this affected many countries, but japan's nike was the one that had it was worse day, other asian markets also plungeed, european stocks also near six month lows, many of them are now on the rebound, but uh we are looking at how this unfolded after the us released this report showing a week of the... expected or employment data, i should say, the uh slump

reflected deepening concerns over the overall state of the us economy, but some of these markets, as i mentioned, have rebounded, but even the rebound given the fact that it happened in very short period of time is putting speculation in the market that something is terribly wrong when it comes to the economic data that's coming out of the us. issue that we looked at next is one that has gripped uh google for quite some time and it's a is monopoly tendencies, but it has now been ruled that google does have an illegal monopoly over the internet search engine. the case depicted google as a technological bully that methodically thorted competition to protect a search engine. this landmark decision that google broke the anti-trust law marks the first major success taking on the dominance of big tech. up next venezuela's election, it's things have subsided, but us politicians called it a fraud, the election results and the american election observers

uh actually went and uh they did not think that this was done lawfully. we witnessed several polling stations and we did not see any irregularities or anything that would point to any type of fraud or legitimacy. now this was based on the election observers, american once who actually made the statement where they did not witness any type of fraud, the voting process, they said is much more rigorous than even that in the us, they have very good process here, those were the items we picked for our info news section, if you have any news in your part of the world with economic flavor, do send them to us, contact information is coming up. in today's show, we'll be exploring who or what... was behind the islamophobic riots that swept across england and the north of ireland at the end of july and the beginning of august. they

organized something called the counter jihad europa conference, they had won in scandinavia and then they had won in brussels in the european parliament in 2007. and that was effectively the beginning of weening the far right away from anti-sianism and judeophobia and towards uh islamophobic and prozionist position. we have tommy robinson sharing this this lie that you know the attacker. an immigrant or muslim, i think andrew t also said that he was an illegal immigrant, fouler uh said he was a syrian, they're talking about european invasion and all this kind of stuff, and you know it turns out that the the attacker was teenager. was born in cardiff in wales to rwanda and parents and is christian and and regardless, just for the sake of argument, let's say it was a muslim, does that justify burning down in moscow, throwing bricks in through people's windows? time now for the in-depth section of the program, when it comes to the bangladeshi economy, many may be surprised

that it is one of the best performing economies in south asia in terms of gdp, but the recent protest that... to the alter of the prime minister sheikh hasina showed that bangladeshies are not that content with the state of their economy, so what's wrong? well first let's take a look at bangladesh's economic performance. this graph pretty much lays it out from the year 2019 uh moving up all the way through 2023, a high point of 7.88% in terms of the gdp growth, um 2020 was down because of covid, and then you see the upsurge and uh how it goes to end 2023 with a 6.0 percent gdp growth, so that's not that bad in the course of five years, as you can see over here, the way that this gdp growth is above the 5% mark all the way up to 7.88% shows that there's an healthy economy there in this country, well one reason for the positive gdp growth comes in its strength and major sectors, some of the sectors that we're

talking about is agriculture and allied growth as it's called, the industrial growth also and is growth uh this is led to the gdp growth that we see in terms of the last three bars that you see here uh the reason why you have three different bars for it is because of uh some of the way that the gdp has been incorporated with the average median, but overall these are the types of figures that we're looking at of the three major uh sectors contributing to the gdp growth, but bangladesh with all of this positive gdp growth is suffering from something like unemployment. as you see here in this graph uh we're looking at uh 5% but it's basically stuck between really 4 to 6% when it comes to this economic indicator, guess the highest going up to 5.83% the year f 2020 when covid hit. bangladesh is ranking with other south asian economies you seen here uh which is not that bad uh maldives coming in at in the

first position 10.2% uh for the 2020 um year 2023 the forecast that that was made and that's uh came in at 8.2% for the actual gdp and there you can see bangladesh comes in behind the maldives and india 6.7% and 5.2% uh which obviously shows uh the standing that this country bangladesh has amongst south asian economies uh but another thing that uh does plague bangladesh is poverty. one of his hasena's achievements the former prime minister has been that she was able to decrease poverty from a high of what you see 41.5% to uh 18.7%, which happened in the year 2022, quite a feat, yet that still is uh pretty high and more needs to be done to decrease that rate. the latest report indicates that there are 1 million bangladeshies when it comes to uh their state of being at risk of poverty, and in terms of

the ones that are moderately poor, that means that they are earning less than $3.65 per day. one has had this to say about the bangladeshi economy, that economic growth cannot justify keeping workers in poverty, that the government of bangladesh must move away from its reliance on cheap labor. cheap labor is very important because that's something they use in the garment industry if it is to ensure a right space development, so that's what the un has had to say about that. all right, let's bring back our guests and see what they think, we have ahmed mubarak who rejoins us, he's a professor of economic. and management, well come back economic, i want to take have your take on why there are countries like russia and france who are reaching out to bangladesh, and anal say the politics, economics and the push for influence are all factoring in that interest, why is bangladesh important in that way? so bangladesh is a large country, geographically

not very large, but it has a population over 150, 100, maybe 170 million people. right, and it's in geopolitically important location, where it's an important state that stands between india and china, two regional powers that are trying to wrestle for more influence in the continent and and around the world, and i think we need to give credit to the students who were able to successfully uh conduct their protests, peaceful protests that ultimately toppled a an autocratic government that had been power for over 15 years and opposition parties could not do anything about it, so where the world failed, the opposition parties failed, we have a bunch of 18, 19, 20 year old students who who came and achieved something that was unthinkable, and they were able to do it without any guns, any bullets, they were able

to do it just from the power of their passion and their commitment to the country that they love, and i think there's a lot from a political science perspective, there's a lot for the entire world, other countries in asia, in africa, in latin america and and countries that are facing. political polarization in north america and europe to also learn from this right, and i think partly the attention on the country reflects that. all right, thank you for that. let's see what faz ahmad tayab uh thinks, he's an author and writer. faz ahmad tayab, welcome back economic divide. um, when we want to take a look at bangladesh and why there's interest in this country, um, our guest are just talked about how india and china are vying in for power when it comes to south asia, but why is there such interest in bangladesh? uh what stands out in terms of how you see it? the bangladesh is important because of its geographical location and

because of its demographic dividend, the country is having 180 million people and it's a big big market, so if we look look the position geo position of the country and at the same time we compare. the shift from the global economic order and political order from the transatlantic to the transpacific then we see that there is rising interest in bangladesh from the superpowers and regional powers so so because the the economy the sizeable the economy is sizeable and at the same time the gdp is is more than 450 billion dollar if there is "there is good governance, the country will definitely grow and and it will remain as a big big revenue generating

source for the big economies and the other things are like bangladesh is is is importing its it's commodities and raw materials mostly from china and india so" two countries always have growing interest on bangladesh and because from import point of view and at the same time technology point point of view the country is highly dependent on on china for for technology like construction and it and technical areas and at the same time the country's internal source for the energy is is getting reduced, so over and over the time bangladesh is getting more dependent on the on the outside world. when it comes to the

overthrow of the former prime minister sheikh hasina, not everything is black and white. bangladesh's former prime minister sheikh hasina has now come out and blamed the us for her owster from power, she said the us removed her from power after she refused to seed control of st. martin's island, which would have allowed the us to sway over the bay of bengal by using it as a military base. the us's interest in st. martin's could be that it would help washington count. china's influence in the indian ocean, give it proximity to the bay of bengal and its maritime boundary with myanmar. another strange fact, bangladesh would be the fourth

country after nepal, pakistan and sri lanka to have fallen, and their replacements are us-friendly or keen to strengthen ties with the us. these are countries that are involved in china's belton road initiatives. there's no denying that in one respect bangladesh's economy is resilient, but that has come a cost, at the expense of the workers who are earning poor wages. that issue needs to be addressed by the new government, not the interm governments, but the new democratically elected government, that is, if the us lets it, if the bangladeshiku was... us revenge for military base refusal, then there will definitely be some turbulent times ahead for bangladesh. that does it for this edition of the program, hope you enjoyed it, if you have any

comments, more importantly if you have any... critiques, please do send them to us, contact information is on your screen or to my right, from entire team here in the capital tehran, it's goodbye until the next economic divide.

iran, the world holds its breath, when will iran act, what will its allies do, and what? what will the israeli state respond with, and will the americans join the war? and if the americans join the war, what will russia and china do about that? in other words, dear viewers, are we on the brink of not just a regional war, but world war ii, have it out with gallowe, why don't you?

the headlines, the israely military continues its deadly air and artillery strikes across the gaza strap as the death thow from the months long onslot in the palestinian territory tops 40,00. amaz spokesman osama hamdan says us lacks any genuine will for establishing a seizfire in gaza and is only trying to buy time for the israeli regime to continue its war.