revenge for military-based refusal. hi, i'm, of welcome to economic divide. some of the highlights of this program, we're going to take a look at the bangladeshi crisis. the nobel laureat units is in charge of the interm governments and what we can see from this is whether uh, there has been any truth to the claims made by haseina, 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 15 to 64, and you have 40% aged 15 to 24 not working with stagnant job growth, and the key industries in bangladesh, garments manufacturing, that's one of them, but is plagued by low wages, which is actually helped build the industry, and there are western companies that continue um, the practice of slave labor.

not long ago, bangladesh was held as an economic miracle. this focus on exporting textiles at apparil 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. combatting steep inflation joblessness. after hasena's bloody overthrow through a student movement, mohammed yunus has been chosen to lead bangladesh an interim capacity. he is noble laureat and microfinance.

but he's also faced charges based on allegations that he received money without government permission, worse yet, it is reported that he is favored by the us embassy with ties to the cia. he had interest in entering politics and forming a government of during the military rule in bangladesh from 2006 to 2008, which is why the us has been accused the regime change in bangladesh. time

now for the social media p: first up, after 17 years, bangladesh is said to witness the swearing in of an interm government following the abrupt end of the awami league. next, us deep state asset will now lead bangladesh, who is muhammad unis? 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 a recipient of us state scholarships funded by cia fronce, also won the nobel peace prize. in 206. 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 us establishment was ready to win its relationship with the shake hasina government for just one citizen. who is mohammed yunus? the man who will head 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 of corruption. he has also been a recipient of us state scholarships funded by cia fronts. he also won the nobel peace prize in 2006. the circular economy of bill and hillary of clinton, units presumed the new leader of bangladesh now or has ran maicro edit bank a scam. this group got millions of dollars of aid from the us government, the world bank, etc. then he fundled 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 sweatshop, 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. us, he's a professor

of economics and management at y university, welcome to economic divide, thank you for having me on your show, all right, this resignation as a prime minister, and then you have: the subsequent takeover it said by the military uh it doesn't really spell um 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 that was pushed out not by the military but by student protesters. so this... was entirely a 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 capita growth, but since the pandemic and especially after the russia, ukraine war, which caused you know global increases in fuel prices, that led to some currently balanced the payments crisis, and bangladesh had to negotiate a loan with the imf in january of 2023, over 4 billion dollars, to stabilize, now what's been happening is that with the increase in 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 that... 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 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 for 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 order. came, 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 is the professor of economics and management at yalal university. welcome to economic divide. thanks for having me. 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 a... very high gdp growth in some respects, what is your view of 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-food 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 real 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 called 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 interim government has has take over and they are led by nobel laureot renown professor dr. mohammed yunus who has been significantly praised for his work. works in in poverty reduction around the world and also he is one 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... performing and those numbers is is around 23 to 24%. it's time now for the inf news

section of the program. first up the legalization of cryptocurrency. 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 mining infrastructure operators, cryptocurrency mining will now be recognized as part of a turnover rather than the issuence 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 its worst day. other asian markets also plungeed european stocks, also neared six month lows, many of them are now on the rebound, but uh we are looking at how this is... in today's show we'll be asking what a donald trump presidency in the us might look like, will he

double down on his previous support for israel, or will his support for the ziness entity call as a result of the genocide in gaza? then you know uh we are not faced with a massive choice of presidential candidates uh whose whose policies on israel would be progressive in any way. trump is clear in his position to deny all of palestinian rights. it was trump who effectively broke at the... the century that foreg all the un sanctions, he didn't talk about granting palestinians a state in return for the normalization of arab countries with the occupation entity, after the us released this uh report showing a weeker than expected or employment data, i should say, the uh slump reflected deepening concerns over the overall 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 uh speculation in the market that something is terribly wrong when it comes to the economic data that's coming out the us. issue that we looked at next is one that has gripped google for quite some time and it's about it 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. uh, up next venezuela's election, uh, 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 uh done lawfully, we witnessed several polling

stations and we did not see any ragularities or anything that would point to any type of fraud or legitimacy. now this was based on the election observers, american ones 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. 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 its gdp. but the recent protest that led to the alster 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, 2020 was down because of covid, and then you see the upsurge and uh how it goes to 2023 with a 6.0% 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 uh allied growth as it's called the industrial growth also and services growth. uh, this is led to the gdp growth that we see in terms of uh 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 uh three major uh sectors contributing to the gdp growth uh, but bangladesh with all of this positive gdp growth is suffering from something like unemployment, as you see here in this graph, we're looking at uh 5%, but it's basically stuck between really 4 to 6% when it comes to this economic indicator, i guess the highest going up to 5. 83% the year f 2020 when covid hit. bangladesh is ranking with other south asian economies is 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 uh comes in behind the maldives and india 6.7% and 5.2 percent uh, which obviously shows the standing that this country, bangladesh has amongst south asian economies. uh, but another thing that uh does plake bangladesh is poverty. one of haseen'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 feet, yet that still is uh pretty high and more needs to be done. 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 cents per day. the un 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, uh, we have ahmad mushfiq mubarak who rejoins us, he's a professor of economics and management. ahmed, welcome back to economic dubai. 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, 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 around the world, and i think we need to give credit to the students who were able to successfully conduct their protests, peaceful protest 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 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 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 fiz uh thinks he's an author and rider. welcome back economic divide. when we want to take a look at bangladesh and why there's interest in this country, i guess there just talked about how india and china are vying in for power when it comes to south asia, but why is... such interest in bangladesh, 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, gew 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 its commodities and raw materials mostly from china and india so these 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 and technical areas and at the same time the country is 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 alster 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 counter 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 belt

and 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 governments, not the interm governments, but the new democratically elected government, that is, if the us lets it. if the bangladeshi cu was us revenge for military based 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 comment?" uh, 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. in this week's episode of erantech we're going to be taking a close look at robotic arm, a tool which has slowly but surely become an essential part of manufacturing and uh automated manufacturing in particular, so we're going to be taking a close look a bleeding edge one with seven degrees of freedom in this week's episode, don't miss it, the times or list it below.

they have memories of uphill battle with a now executed iraqi dictator saddam hussein and his now defunct baptist regime and the like who sough to stifle the pilgrimage.

today, centuries old arbain walk is still alive thanks to those who serve the pilgrims of imam hussain from across the world.

another school sheltering this place people comes under israel's track in gaza with at least dozen people being killed in the attack. freshers really bombardments of lebanon from the hezballah movement to retaliate with volley of rockets targeting the regime's position inside the occupied territories. also in the headlines running parliament holds the fourth day of debates on the ministerial pics proposed by ch.