Three numbers landed in Dhaka within about 24 hours of each other this week, and taken together they say more about the state of Bangladesh’s economy than any single one of them does alone: private sector credit growth has fallen to its weakest pace since 1993, the National Board of Revenue has missed its collection target for the tenth consecutive fiscal year, and July’s exports — while a 12-month high in dollar terms — were still lower than the same month a year ago.

None of these facts is shocking in isolation. Together, they describe an economy where businesses aren’t borrowing, the state isn’t collecting what it planned to, and trade growth is being flattered by a weak comparison point rather than fresh demand.

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Private credit growth: the weakest in a generation

Bangladesh Bank data released this week show private sector credit grew just 4.47% in June, down from 4.98% in May. Central bank officials confirmed this is the slowest pace since 1993 — a 33-year low. It also missed Bangladesh Bank’s own revised target of 5.5% for the period, itself already a steep cut from the original 8.5% projection set at the start of FY26.

“You could say we are in a state of economic war,” Syed Mahbubur Rahman, managing director of Mutual Trust Bank and former chairman of the Association of Bankers Bangladesh, told the Daily Star. He pointed to weak export demand, declining household incomes, and factories running below capacity because of the country’s ongoing gas shortage as the drivers of businesses’ reluctance to invest.

The credit slowdown isn’t only a demand-side story. Banks themselves have grown more cautious about lending as asset quality deteriorates. Defaulted loans stood at Tk588,704 crore — 32.26% of total outstanding loans of Tk1,824,668 crore — as of the end of March, among the highest classified-loan ratios in the world. Md Touhidul Alam Khan, MD and CEO of NRBC Bank, said many banks are now parking funds in government treasury bills and bonds rather than extending fresh loans, since sovereign paper carries far less risk than corporate lending in the current environment.

Bangladesh Bank’s chief economist, Md Akhtar Hossain, offered a more structural explanation: rapid credit expansion during the previous Awami League government reached as high as 20% annually, but much of that lending went to large borrowers who later siphoned off the funds — leaving today’s banking sector to absorb the consequences through elevated non-performing loans. He expressed hope that the 30 July policy rate cut, which brought the repo rate down 50 basis points to 9.5% (Bangladesh Bank’s first reduction in six years), combined with newly announced stimulus packages, will help credit growth recover in the coming months.

NBR: a tenth consecutive miss

The National Board of Revenue collected Tk4.15 lakh crore in FY26, falling Tk88,000 crore short of its revised target — the tenth straight fiscal year the tax authority has missed its goal, according to provisional data released this week.

Revenue did grow across all three major tax heads: VAT rose 11.4% year-on-year to Tk157,734 crore (38% of total collections), income tax grew fastest at 12.8% to Tk145,620 crore, and customs duties and supplementary taxes increased 11.9% to Tk112,119 crore. The growth simply wasn’t fast enough to hit a target that several economists argue was unrealistic from the outset.

“Government expenditure does not stop because revenue falls short. The shortfall has signalled deeper fiscal stress,” said Mohammad Lutfor Rahman, a professor of economics at Jahangirnagar University. When planned revenue doesn’t materialise, the government leans more heavily on domestic and external borrowing — and Bangladesh already paid $4.5 billion in debt servicing last fiscal year, according to the Economic Relations Division.

The NBR has set a target of more than Tk6 lakh crore for the current fiscal year, FY27 — a figure economist Md Deen Islam called overly ambitious, noting the NBR has never achieved annual revenue growth above 30%. A widening deficit, he warned, would make it harder for the central bank to contain inflation while discouraging the private investment the economy badly needs right now.

Exports: a 12-month high that’s actually a year-on-year decline

Bangladesh earned $4.72 billion in exports in July — the strongest single month in a year and up more than 12% from June’s $4.20 billion — yet the figure still represents a 0.9% decline from July 2025.

The explanation lies in an unusually strong comparison base. Last July, exporters rushed shipments to the United States ahead of new tariffs that took effect on 7 August 2025, producing the highest single-month RMG export performance in Bangladesh’s history. Against that inflated benchmark, this July’s $3.89 billion in garment exports — down 1.92% year-on-year — looks weaker than it otherwise would.

BGMEA’s senior vice-president, Inamul Haq Khan Bablu, said garment exports are unlikely to grow significantly before December, citing three separate headwinds: soft global demand, buyers’ concerns about Bangladesh’s ability to meet delivery schedules given the ongoing gas crisis limiting factory output, and a payment dispute with Polish retailer LPP, which Bangladeshi exporters allege has withheld roughly $40 million owed for goods shipped to Russian buyers — a dispute that has reportedly led LPP to pause new orders from Bangladesh altogether.

Sectors outside RMG performed more strongly: jute and jute goods exports rose 54% year-on-year, home textiles grew 14.37%, and leather products increased 2.81%, according to Export Promotion Bureau data — a reminder that Bangladesh’s export base, while still overwhelmingly RMG-dependent, has pockets of genuine diversification.

The industry response: BGMEA and BTMA join forces

Against this backdrop, Bangladesh’s two largest textile and apparel trade bodies signed a Memorandum of Understanding this week to jointly pursue the industry’s long-standing $100 billion export target. BGMEA and BTMA will co-organise the Bangladesh International Textile and Apparel Machinery Exhibition (BITMA) in December, aimed at positioning Bangladesh as a hub for sustainable, technologically advanced textile manufacturing.

BGMEA president Mahmud Hasan Khan Babu also flagged a persistent friction point in the relationship between garment exporters and textile millers: disputes over Proforma Invoices, where one party occasionally fails to honour agreed terms. He proposed forming a joint arbitration mechanism to keep both PIs and letters of credit reliably honoured — a small but telling signal of the coordination costs still embedded in Bangladesh’s textile value chain.

A rare bright spot: Startup Bangladesh’s first exit

Amid the macro headwinds, one piece of genuinely positive news: Startup Bangladesh, the government’s venture capital arm, completed its first-ever exit this week, selling its stake in health-tech company Pulse Tech Limited — reportedly the first exit by any sovereign venture fund in the country’s history.

Pulse Tech, a technology-enabled pharmaceutical distributor combining medicine distribution, embedded financing, SaaS tools and the ONE Pharmacy franchise network, has grown from roughly $2 million in annual revenue at the time of Startup Bangladesh’s investment to more than $150 million in annualised revenue today, while remaining profitable — averaging 20% monthly growth over the past 18 months and now serving more than 14,000 pharmacies. The company is preparing a Series A round, nationwide expansion, and entry into Gulf markets.

Successful venture exits are widely seen as a marker of ecosystem maturity, since they let early investors recycle capital into new startups while demonstrating that such bets can pay off. It’s a small data point next to the credit and revenue numbers above, but a meaningful one for anyone tracking whether Bangladesh’s startup sector is developing the full lifecycle — not just funding rounds, but successful returns.

The human cost, in numbers: farmer income

A new Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics survey, published this week, adds another dimension to the picture: small-scale food producers, who make up 53.65% of all Bangladeshi farmers, earn an average of just Tk33,639 a year — less than half the reported national average of Tk78,286, and a fraction of the Tk129,956 earned by large-scale producers.

Livestock accounts for 84.5% of small producers’ income. Regionally, small-scale farmers in Rajshahi earn the most (Tk44,707 annually) while those in Sylhet earn the least (Tk24,636). BIDS research director Mohammad Yunus argued that fair farm-gate pricing and addressing the gap between what farmers receive and what consumers pay — including examining the role of market syndicates — are essential if Bangladesh wants to keep smallholders in agriculture as the sector’s workforce continues to shrink.

Economy Watch: the numbers, at a glance

Markets in Dhaka are closed today, Wednesday 5 August, for July Mass Uprising Day, marking two years since 5 August 2024. Trading resumes Thursday — so the exchange and index figures below are carried forward from the last verified reading, dated accordingly.

• USD/BDT (interbank): 123.81 (high 123.82 / low 123.80 / WAR 123.81); spot rate 123.77 (till 5pm) — 4 Aug 2026, latest available
• Yuan/BDT: 18.31-18.32 (bid rates) — 4 Aug 2026, latest available
• DSEX: 5,894.12, up 8.435 points (+0.1433%) — 4 Aug 2026 close, 2:40pm; markets closed today, reopen Thursday
• Gold, 22K/bhori: Tk223,074, unchanged — BAJUS rate, effective since 1 Aug 2026
• Policy rate (BB repo): 9.5%, cut 50bps from 10% effective 30 July/2 Aug — SLF now 11.0%, SDF 7.5%
• Private sector credit growth (June): 4.47%, a 33-year low, down from 4.98% in May
• Inflation (June, point-to-point): 9.16%, down from 9.42% in May; no July print yet as of 5 Aug
• Food inflation (June): 8.60%, down from 9.06% in May; non-food 9.61%
• Classified (bad) loans: 32.26% of total outstanding (Tk588,704cr of Tk1,824,668cr) — end-March 2026 reading
• Remittances (1 Jul-3 Aug, FY27): $3.27bn, up 20.9% y/y from $2.70bn in the same period FY26; $133m on 3 Aug alone
• Gross forex reserves (daily): $36.59bn gross / $31.78bn under IMF’s BPM6 methodology — 4 Aug 2026, up from $36.47bn/$31.65bn on 2 Aug
• GDP growth: FY26 actual 3.7% (below BBS provisional 4.14%); ADB forecasts 4.5% for FY27 — as of July 2026, latest available
• ADB inflation forecast: 9.0% for 2026, 8.8% for 2027 — as of July 2026, latest available
• Exports (July, FY27): $4.72bn, down 0.9% y/y against a record base; RMG down 1.92% to $3.89bn; up 12% from June

Global Signal: what’s reaching Dhaka this morning

Oil prices continue falling — Brent was trading near $79.36 a barrel this morning (-5.3%) and WTI near $75.16 (-0.8%), extending losses on signs of progress in US-mediated talks to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was careful to describe the talks as “progress made, but not finality yet” even as President Trump and Treasury Secretary Bessent both suggested a deal could be signed this week — the emerging arrangement covers Hormuz transit only, with Iran’s nuclear programme requiring a separate agreement. An unnamed cargo vessel was struck by an “unknown projectile” off Oman on Tuesday, and Iran-backed Houthis sank an Indian ship in the Red Sea, crew rescued.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, Prime Minister Netanyahu said Israel “didn’t agree” to the Board of Peace’s Hamas-disarmament roadmap, submitting amendments instead, while Israel-Lebanon talks on Hezbollah’s disarmament opened in Rome despite Hezbollah’s opposition — a reminder that the Gaza and Iran tracks remain separate, unresolved stories rather than one broadly improving picture.

On the Russia-Ukraine front, a Ukrainian drone strike on an industrial zone in Russia’s Moscow region killed 5 people and injured 10 on Tuesday, one of three overnight attacks on Russian warehouses; Russian strikes across Ukraine killed roughly 5 civilians including two children. The death toll from Monday’s drone strike on a Black Sea beach in Russia’s Krasnodar region rose to 7, including 3 children, with 58 wounded.

Wall Street closed at record highs on Tuesday on that same Hormuz optimism plus strong earnings: the Dow rose 1.71% (+907.47 points) to close above 54,000 for the first time, at 54,085.88; the S&P 500 gained 1.79% to a record 7,736.52; the Nasdaq surged 2.59% to 26,584.99, led by Palantir’s nearly 30% jump on an “otherworldly” quarter. The Federal Reserve’s 9-3 hold at 3.50%-3.75% from 29 July remains the latest decision, with new Chair Kevin Warsh declining to pre-signal future moves. Bitcoin is trading around $64,000-$64,300, modestly higher on continued US spot-ETF inflows.

What to watch

For Bangladesh’s business and policy community, the throughline across today’s domestic data is straightforward: monetary policy has started to ease, but the credit, revenue and export numbers all suggest the real economy hasn’t caught up yet. Whether the 30 July rate cut and this week’s removal of Sonali Bank’s lending caps translate into an actual pickup in private investment is likely to be the more important test than any single month’s export or reserves figure. Globally, whether this week’s Hormuz optimism survives contact with an actual signed deal — rather than continued “progress” — is the parallel test on the fuel-cost side of Bangladesh’s ledger.

This article is based on reporting from The Business Standard, The Daily Star, and BSS News, and reflects Bangladesh Bank and Export Promotion Bureau data as of 4-5 August 2026.