ORAWEK Morning Brief — Monday, 10 August 2026

Bangladesh’s business and finance professionals woke up Monday to two economic signals pulling in opposite directions: a trade deficit at its widest point in three years, and a manufacturing sector posting its strongest month of expansion in months. Here’s what’s shaping decisions in Dhaka today.

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Trade deficit widens to $27.28bn, up 34% year-on-year

Bangladesh’s trade deficit hit a three-year high of $27.28 billion in FY26, a 34% jump from FY25, according to the latest Bangladesh Bank data. Exports were nearly flat at $43.85bn for the year, while imports climbed 10.5% year-on-year to $71.14bn — the largest annual import increase since FY22.

CPD research director Khondaker Golam Moazzem said global factors, including US tariffs and inflation in Western markets, bear more responsibility for the widening gap than domestic demand, pointing out that private sector credit growth is running at a historic low. RAPID chairman Abdur Razzaque struck a more cautious note on the import numbers specifically: capital-machinery imports have stayed weak even as the overall import bill has risen, which he said suggests the increase hasn’t yet been accompanied by a genuine, broad-based revival in productive investment.

There’s a cushion, though. Record remittances of $35.6bn for the year kept the current-account deficit contained to roughly $1.6bn, and the overall balance of payments posted a $6.6bn surplus. Razzaque described the situation as “an interesting asymmetry” — external-sector stability has improved considerably, even as that stability hasn’t yet translated into a comparable recovery in investment and export dynamism.

July PMI jumps to 57.8 on the strongest manufacturing gain in months

Set against that, Bangladesh’s composite Purchasing Managers’ Index rose 4.9 points to 57.8 in July, up from 52.9 in June and well above the 50-point line that separates expansion from contraction, according to the MCCI–Policy Exchange Bangladesh survey.

Manufacturing led the rebound, surging 16.6 points to 65.4 — its strongest reading since the survey began — with growth recorded simultaneously across new orders, exports, output, employment and imports. Services expanded for a 22nd consecutive month; agriculture, an 11th, though its pace of growth moderated. Policy Exchange chairman M Masrur Reaz attributed part of the improvement to easier foreign-exchange conditions and deregulation measures included in the FY27 budget.

Construction remained in contraction for a second straight month, and order backlogs stayed thin across several sectors — a signal that July’s bounce hasn’t yet built into a deep pipeline of future work.

Chattogram businesses push for a ‘Sick Industries Law’

Business leaders in Chattogram, where only around 2,700 of more than 6,000 once-listed factories remain active, are calling for a “Sick Industries Law” modelled on similar legislation in developed economies to revive closed and struggling industrial units.

The proposal surfaced at a Bangladesh Bank stakeholder consultation on the central bank’s Tk60,000 crore incentive package. Of that, Tk20,000cr is earmarked for closed industries and service-sector businesses at 4% bank-level interest and 7% for customers, with further tranches for agriculture, CMSME enterprises, export diversification, and the frozen shrimp, fish and leather export sectors. Bangladesh Bank Governor Md Mostaqur Rahman said the package targets around 2.5 million new jobs and urged banks to weigh a borrower’s cash flow more heavily than collateral, since conventional mortgage-based recovery methods have failed to bring down non-performing loans.

Dhaka pushes for an EU trade deal and RCEP entry

Bangladesh is preparing to launch formal free trade agreement negotiations with the European Union — its largest trading partner, accounting for 21.5% of the country’s global merchandise trade — while simultaneously pursuing accession to the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

Commerce Minister Khandakar Abdul Muktadir said an initial exchange of letters with the EU has already taken place, with negotiation dates expected after August. Bilateral goods trade with the EU reached €23.3 billion in 2025, and Bangladesh remains the largest beneficiary of the EU’s Everything But Arms scheme, with €19 billion in duty-free exports at a 96% utilisation rate. In parallel, Commerce Secretary Md Ataur Rahman Khan is in Australia and New Zealand building support for Bangladesh’s RCEP bid — a 15-nation bloc representing a $32 trillion economic zone.

Remittances hit a record $35.58bn — but concentration risk is rising

FY26 remittances rose 17.64% year-on-year to a record $35.58 billion, with Saudi Arabia ($5.85bn), the UK ($5.07bn), the UAE ($4.58bn), Malaysia ($3.40bn) and the US ($3.01bn) together supplying 61.61% of the total, according to Bangladesh Bank data. The top ten source countries account for nearly 87% of all inflows.

Mustafa K Mujeri, former Bangladesh Bank chief economist, warned that heavy dependence on unskilled and semi-skilled labour markets in the Middle East leaves remittance flows exposed to regional policy shifts, and argued for greater investment in skilled-labour deployment to markets like the UK and US, which tend to produce more stable remittance streams.

Economy Watch: today’s key figures

• USD/BDT (interbank): 123.80 — High 123.82 / Low 123.74 / WAR 123.80; spot till 5pm at 123.69 (9 Aug 2026, latest available)
• Yuan/BDT: 18.35–18.36 bid (9 Aug 2026)
• DSEX: 5,822.31, down 38.64 points (-0.659%) at Sunday’s close (9 Aug 2026)
• Gold 22K/bhori: Tk234,038 (BAJUS rate, effective 10 Aug 2026)
• Policy rate (BB repo): 9.5%, cut 50bps from 10% effective 30 Jul/2 Aug
• Private sector credit growth: 4.47% in June — a 33-year low, no July print yet
• Inflation (point-to-point): 9.16% in June, no July figure published as of 10 August
• Food inflation: 8.60% in June
• Classified (bad) loans: 32.26% of outstanding loans as of end-March
• Remittances: $2.86bn in July (+15.8% y/y); FY26 full year $35.58bn (+17.64% y/y)
• GDP growth: FY26 actual 3.7%; FY27 forecast 4.5% (ADB)
• ADB inflation forecast: 9.0% for 2026, 8.8% for 2027
• Forex reserves: $37.58bn gross / $32.93bn on a BPM6 basis (June 2026, latest monthly figure)
• Trade deficit: $27.28bn for FY26, a three-year high, up 34% y/y

Global Signal: what reached Dhaka overnight

Oil and the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s Supreme National Security Council laid out six sweeping demands — including a permanent end to the war, withdrawal of US naval and air forces, war-damage compensation, sanctions relief and the release of frozen assets — before it will reopen the Strait of Hormuz, undercutting Washington’s more optimistic public framing. Brent crude is trading near $84.24 (+0.83%) and WTI near $78.68 (+0.64%) this morning. Shipping data shows just 33 vessels transited Hormuz Monday through Thursday last week, down from 50 the week before. For Dhaka, the gap between how the US and Iran are each describing the same negotiations means fuel-cost relief shouldn’t be priced in as a near-term certainty.

Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly rejected the US-backed Board of Peace’s 15-point Hamas disarmament roadmap and, in a reported last-minute reversal, halted a small IDF withdrawal from areas near Rafah that he had personally approved days earlier. The White House characterised the rejection as campaign rhetoric ahead of Israel’s 27 October election, noting it isn’t troubled as long as Israel continues holding off on Gaza strikes, which have now paused for five days.

Russia-Ukraine. Overnight strikes killed at least 7 people on both sides. Ukrainian drones hit Russia’s Belgorod region, damaging 29 apartment blocks; Russian missiles struck a high-rise in Kharkiv. Both militaries reported intercepting large numbers of drones and missiles from the other side.

Wall Street. US markets closed at fresh records Friday — the S&P 500 up 0.62% to 7,757.64, the Nasdaq up 1.3% to 26,690.62, and the Dow up 0.28% to 54,036.93 — after a surprise loss of 23,000 nonfarm payrolls in July reduced expectations of a near-term Federal Reserve rate hike.

The Fed. The Federal Reserve’s rate remains at 3.50%–3.75% following its 29 July hold, with no meeting since. Friday’s weak jobs data has shifted market expectations away from a near-term hike.

Bitcoin. Trading around $65,200–$65,300, largely flat over 24 hours and still capped below the $66,000 resistance level that has held since mid-July.

AI This Week: Claude Code’s auto mode goes default

Anthropic is making Claude Code’s “auto mode” the default setting for Pro, Max and Team accounts starting 14 August, meaning the coding tool will proceed on tasks without asking for step-by-step approval, stepping in only for actions it judges irreversible, destructive, or reaching outside a user’s own environment. The company said internal testing found auto mode actually catches more harmful actions than manual review — 89% versus 13.6% — largely because habitual approval-clicking undermines human oversight in practice, with 97% of prompts getting approved regardless.

The practical takeaway for Dhaka businesses evaluating agentic AI tools: the safer design isn’t necessarily “ask permission for everything” — it’s narrow, well-defined guardrails around genuinely irreversible actions, paired with real audit logging after the fact. When assessing any AI coding or automation vendor, ask specifically what counts as an “irreversible or destructive” action in their system, and who reviews it afterward.

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