Man in Indian market counting rupee notes, showcasing daily street
Man in Indian market counting rupee notes, showcasing daily street commerce. cottonbro studio/Pexels.com

Expatriate Bangladeshis sent home $8.979 billion between 1 July and 4 October, the opening stretch of FY2026–27. That is 16.2 percent more than the $7.726 billion recorded in the same period a year earlier, according to Bangladesh Bank figures reported on 5 October.

The early days of October were especially strong. Inflows from 1–4 October reached $388 million, against $141 million in the same four days last year. On 4 October alone, banks logged $181 million.

Remittances remain one of the few external cushions the economy can count on while exports and private credit stay soft. Higher formal inflows support foreign-exchange reserves and ease pressure on the balance of payments, which is why the central bank has spent the past two years pushing transfers through banking channels rather than informal routes.

The number is a flow, not a stock. It does not by itself fix weak investment or high bad loans. It does mean the external account entered October with more dollar support than it had at the same point last year.

After 16 years, direct listing is open again

The finance ministry has lifted a ban on direct listing that had stood since 1 February 2010. Eligible state-owned, private and multinational companies can now list on the Dhaka and Chittagong stock exchanges without raising fresh capital through an initial public offering.

The order, issued on 5 October, follows a recommendation from the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission on 19 August. The ministry revoked the old circular so established firms can come to market under tighter eligibility rules.

Read more

Who qualifies is narrower than a free-for-all. Government-owned or majority-owned companies are in. So are firms in which the state holds at least 10 percent of paid-up capital, and foreign-owned or multinational companies. Telecommunications and ICT infrastructure providers approved by the telecom regulator also qualify if they have at least Tk 300 crore in paid-up capital.

The point is supply. The local market has long complained of too few large, profitable names. Direct listing lets existing shareholders sell down without the company issuing new shares. It does not, by itself, reverse the market's recent slide: Dhaka stocks extended losses for a second session on Monday as selling spread across the board.

A five-year plan for a banking system one-third in default

Bangladesh Bank has put a five-year, 13-point clean-up plan in front of the parliamentary standing committee on finance. The trigger is the stock of bad loans: about Tk 6.06 lakh crore, roughly a third of all credit the banks have given out.

The roadmap, presented on 5 October, splits the work by horizon. In the short term the central bank wants pressure on each bank's largest defaulters and faster recovery. Medium-term steps include publishing lists of wilful defaulters and rewriting provisioning rules. Longer-term measures would cap how much a single borrower can take from the system as a whole, and tighten recovery law.

The hole is not only in the loan book. Twenty-two banks are sitting on about Tk 2.54 lakh crore in accumulated losses. Twelve have already taken Tk 84,946 crore in liquidity support. The central bank's line is that the system is not short of liquidity overall, but that losses, weak governance and concentrated defaults are blocking normal lending.

A committee paper is not a recovered loan. The test is whether the short-term list of top defaulters produces cash, and whether exposure limits are enforced before the next large borrower becomes the next large default.

Thirty banks go partly dark while Q-Cash moves house

Customers of about 30 banks are facing broken card and cash-machine services while the Q-Cash network migrates its systems. The window runs from 9pm on 4 October to about noon on 10 October. What fails depends on the bank: ATMs, cash recyclers, debit and credit cards, point-of-sale terminals, Bangla QR, NPSB transfers and some online payments.

The list includes Sonali, Janata, Agrani, Rupali, Trust Bank, Bank Asia, National Bank, Jamuna Bank, Mercantile Bank and others. Banks told customers by SMS and notice that the work is meant to raise capacity and security. Bangladesh Bank, according to local reports, was not informed beforehand.

Some alternatives stay up. Individual banks have said selected debit-card routes, or transfers to mobile wallets through their own apps, may still work. For anyone who needs cash from an affected ATM this week, that is a thin substitute.

The network says 37 banks take its services. When most of them limit the same pipes at once, the disruption is no longer a single-bank maintenance note. It is a retail-payments outage across a large slice of the formal system, scheduled to clear by Saturday midday.