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Top Story: Energy Rationing and a Bank Rescue Clock Ticking Down

Bangladesh Bank Governor Md Mostaqur Rahman has told the top executives of 13 commercial banks to finalise a rescue package this month for Citygroup — one of the country’s largest business conglomerates, carrying over Tk266 billion in outstanding loans from 36 banks — or see those loans reclassified once a temporary deferment facility expires. The governor rejected the banks’ request to extend the deferral by one or two months, citing Citygroup’s role supplying essential commodities such as sugar, edible oil, atta, maida, chickpea and lentils ahead of Ramadan, when consumption of these staples rises sharply. He said the central bank has a backup plan — potentially routing raw-material imports through institutions like Sena Kalyan Sangstha — if the banks fail to reach a decision this month. According to bankers, Citygroup would need roughly Tk40 billion in fresh working capital to continue production; several bank executives told The Financial Express they want to support the group but worry about interest recovery given its current liquidity stress. (Source: The Financial Express)

Retailers, meanwhile, say an energy-saving measure is costing them dearly. Traders report losing up to 30% of sales since the government cut mandatory shopping-mall closing time to 8pm — the latest in a string of changes to the rule this year, which has moved between 6pm and 10pm since April. Apex Footwear, one of the country’s major footwear brands, says roughly 60% of its domestic sales normally happen after 8pm and reports a 20–30% drop in business; Lotto Bangladesh (240 outlets) reported a roughly 20% sales fall within a month, and Mustafa Mart said revenue at one outlet fell from around Tk3 lakh to Tk70,000 daily. Rents and staff salaries have not fallen to match the shorter trading window. The Ministry of Power says the restriction will not be relaxed while an evening power deficit — roughly 1,900MW on 14 September — persists. (Source: The Daily Star)

On the industrial side, four major trade bodies are pushing for a fairer share of gas. BGMEA, BKMEA, BTMA and BTTLMEA jointly petitioned state-run Gas Transmission Company Limited (GTCL) for a weekly zonal rationing scheme, after finding that the Titas Gas franchise area — home to 94% of the country’s textile and garment factories, some 6,500 plants employing 1.2 crore workers and generating $52 billion in export earnings — received only 883.2 mmcfd against its approved 980 mmcfd allocation over a five-day sample period in early September, even as other gas-distribution zones received supply above their allocated share. The trade bodies want each industrial zone to receive full-pressure gas for five continuous days a week on a rotating basis, so factories can plan production rather than running under-pressurised every day. (Source: The Business Standard)

Separately, Bangladesh Bank moved to tighten bank governance. A new circular requires nominee directors on bank boards to personally hold shares — at least 2% of paid-up capital in a listed shareholder company, or 20% in an unlisted one — and to be an MD or director of that company. Officials say the rule closes a loophole that had allowed employees of business groups, including in some S Alam Group-linked cases, to sit on bank boards representing shareholder companies without a genuine personal ownership stake, raising questions about independence and accountability. (Source: The Business Standard)

The takeaway: every thread in today’s edition traces back to the same underlying squeeze — energy costs and shortages are colliding with tight liquidity across retail, manufacturing, and now a major conglomerate’s balance sheet. Economist Rehman Sobhan’s remarks yesterday, calling for a corporate ownership model that gives workers a stake to reduce inequality, land in exactly this context: as the costs of this squeeze get distributed across the economy, who bears them — and who owns the eventual recovery — remains an open and increasingly urgent policy question.

Economy Watch

• USD/BDT: 123.00 spot; interbank range 122.90–123.00, as of 17 September 5:00pm close (Source: Bangladesh Bank, subject to a 1–2 day publishing lag)
• Yuan/BDT: 18.30–18.32 bid rate, 17 September (Source: Bangladesh Bank)
• DSEX: closed at 5,532.14 on 17 September, up 38.07 points (+0.69%) from 5,494.07 — a third consecutive gain, independently confirmed by The Business Standard’s reporting that “DSEX climbs above 5,500 as stocks extend rally for third day” (Source: DSE, cross-checked)
• Inflation (CPI): 8.26% year-on-year as of August 2026, unchanged; no fresher print released this week (Source: Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics)
• Policy (Repo) Rate: 9.50%, unchanged since Bangladesh Bank’s cut from 10% on 30 July (Source: Bangladesh Bank)
• Stressed Credit: Citygroup’s Tk266 billion in outstanding loans across 36 banks faces reclassification unless a rescue plan is finalised by month-end (Source: The Financial Express)
• Foreign Exchange Reserves: $36.32 billion gross ($31.47 billion on a BPM6 basis), per Bangladesh Bank’s most recent release (16 September) (Source: Bangladesh Bank)
• Gold (22K, per bhori): Tk232,930, unchanged from the previous session (Source: BAJUS)
• Development Finance: Korea signed agreements for a $39.286 million grant toward the Saemaul Plus End Poverty Program, to run 2026–2034 across selected villages in Cumilla, Feni and Bogura districts (Source: BSS / Economic Relations Division)

Global Signal

Oil eased even as the underlying Gulf risk didn’t. Brent crude traded at $103.10/bbl (-2.55%) this morning per live pricing from oilprice.com, with WTI at $100.50 (-1.90%), as Wall Street’s post-Fed relief rally offset ongoing Gulf supply concerns. Oilprice.com’s own top headline this morning warned that LNG prices “could jump further” as the Hormuz supply crunch persists — worth watching directly against Bangladesh’s own elevated LNG import bill. Fresh Reuters shipping data shows traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remains below its 10-day average, underscoring that the disruption has not eased despite President Trump’s claim that the war is “nearing an end.” A UN mission has reportedly found evidence of US war crimes during the conflict, a finding Washington has rejected; separately, Houthi and Saudi forces have exchanged strikes, with Yemeni civilians fleeing by boat as the wider conflict spreads. Saudi Arabia, for its part, reportedly won’t move on Israel normalisation while it seeks Western support against Houthi attacks.

The Bank of Japan hiked its key interest rate to 1.25%, and Asian markets broadly tracked a strong Wall Street rally overnight as oil prices dropped. Wall Street itself closed sharply higher on 17 September: the Dow rose 0.61% to 51,778.04, the S&P 500 gained 1.14% to 7,637.76, and the Nasdaq jumped 1.69% to 26,418.30 (Source: Google Finance) — markets appear to be reading Wednesday’s Fed rate hike as a credible inflation-control move rather than a recession warning. Separately, explosions were reported near the Polish border overnight, forcing two airports to shut — a reminder that Russia-Ukraine war spillover risk to NATO territory persists.

AI This Week: Practical Intelligence

Caltech-founded startup PrismML released Bonsai 2 27B this week, a compressed AI model that matches 98% of a full-size 27-billion-parameter model’s benchmark performance while fitting in just 5.9GB of memory — small enough to run entirely on a laptop or high-end smartphone, with no cloud connection or ongoing subscription required. Separately, as AI agents become harder for human teams to directly supervise — following incidents this year where thousands of AI agents coordinated faster than humans could track — a growing set of “AI monitoring AI” tools, from research labs like Apollo Research and startups such as Embroidery, are emerging to watch agent actions in real time and flag risky behaviour before it executes.

Practical takeaway for Dhaka teams: compressed, on-device models like Bonsai are worth watching if your business is wary of recurring cloud AI subscription costs or unreliable internet connectivity — running a capable model locally on existing hardware sidesteps both problems. On the agent-monitoring side, you don’t need a sophisticated AI watchdog to capture the basic benefit: simple activity logs of what any AI agent actually did — which files it touched, what it sent, what it changed — are inexpensive to set up, and this week’s reporting suggests that basic logging, not fancier AI oversight, is often what’s actually missing when things go wrong.

ORAWEK Note

A retailer told me this week that the hardest part of the 8pm closing rule isn’t the lost hours — it’s that his rent, his staff, and his loan payments don’t close early too. That’s the shape of almost every story in today’s edition: the costs of this crisis are fixed and falling due on schedule, while the revenue to cover them keeps shrinking. Policy can ration gas and stagger shop hours, but someone still has to absorb the gap in between.

— ORAWEK

ORAWEK (ভোরের সংক্ষেপ) is a free weekday morning business intelligence digest for Bangladesh’s business, finance, and policy professionals. Business. Economy. AI. In 300 words or less. Free forever, zero spam.