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Bangladesh’s capital market is showing its first sustained sign of foreign confidence in years, even as warning signs on real investment and near-term inflation deepen.

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Foreign investors bought around Tk250 crore in shares against Tk180 crore in sales in the first 24 days of September — a rare stretch of sustained net buying, according to Dhaka Stock Exchange data. Market participants credit the shift to a run of regulatory easing: the removal of the floor price, revised IPO and margin rules, and a higher threshold for prior approval on capital repatriation by foreign investors, raised from Tk10 crore to Tk100 crore by Bangladesh Bank. Adding to the momentum, MSCI will resume regular index reviews for Bangladesh from its November cycle, ending the “special treatment” status the index provider imposed in 2023 amid the earlier floor-price disruptions (Source: The Business Standard).

The improvement remains modest against the market’s scale: foreign holdings sit at roughly Tk13,000 crore, and only about 132 of the exchange’s 360 listed companies carry any foreign shareholding at all.

Separately, the United Nations’ General Assembly Second Committee will discuss Bangladesh’s request to defer its Least Developed Country graduation by three years at a meeting on 7 October. Bangladesh is currently scheduled to graduate on 24 November; the UN Committee for Development Policy has confirmed the country meets all three graduation criteria, but the final decision on any deferral rests with a General Assembly vote expected before that date. Nepal has made a parallel request (Source: The Business Standard).

Underneath both stories sits a more troubling signal about the real economy. Economist Selim Raihan, writing in TBS, points to Chattogram Customs House data showing capital-machinery, medical-equipment and heavy-machinery imports fell 45.1% between FY2021-22 and FY2024-25. Although imports recovered somewhat in FY2025-26, they remain below the earlier peak, and the 15-year trend line for these imports has fallen more than 41%. Raihan attributes the stagnation to a mix of political instability, high borrowing costs, foreign-currency shortages and unreliable energy supply to industrial zones (Source: The Business Standard).

That warning lands in the same week foreign tourist arrivals extended a second consecutive year of decline, falling roughly 20% year-on-year to 239,400 in the first half of 2026, according to Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics data compiled from Special Branch and Bangladesh Bank figures — evidence, industry figures say, that political turmoil, security concerns and weak visitor infrastructure continue to weigh on inbound flows even as the government pushes a digital-tourism agenda (Source: The Daily Star).

Why it matters for Dhaka: Portfolio capital and real investment are moving in different directions right now, and only one of them — the harder, stickier kind — actually builds factories and jobs. Add a Tk20-per-litre fuel-price hike that took effect this week, the third such increase under the current government, and the disinflation trend of the past few months looks set to reverse just as Bangladesh Bank has held its policy rate steady (Source: The Financial Express).

Economy Watch

• USD/BDT (spot): ৳123.17 at the 24 September close; inter-bank range ৳123.15–123.25. Bangladesh Bank’s exchange-rate portal runs a 1–2 day publishing lag. (Source: Bangladesh Bank)
• Yuan/BDT: Bid rate ৳18.34–18.36 as of 24 September. (Source: Bangladesh Bank)
• DSEX: Closed at 5,578.33 on 24 September (2:40 PM), down 17.83 points or 0.32% on the day. (Source: DSE)
• Gold (22k/bhori): ৳232,930 as of 8 AM today, down from ৳234,621 previously. (Source: goldr.org)
• Inflation (point-to-point): 8.26% in August 2026, down from 8.32% in July and part of a months-long disinflation trend — though the fresh Tk20/litre fuel-price hike is widely expected to reverse this in the coming readings. (Source: The Financial Express)
• Food inflation: 7.02% in August, down from 8.60% in June. (Source: BBS)
• Policy rate (repo): Held at 9.50% at Bangladesh Bank’s most recent review, after a 50-basis-point cut two months earlier; the central bank cited the anticipated inflationary impact of the fuel-price hike and an upward-revised government pay scale. (Source: The Financial Express)
• Bad loans (NPL ratio): 32.78% of total disbursed loans as of June 2026 — roughly Tk6.07 lakh crore in classified loans — the highest non-performing loan ratio in the world, ahead of war-affected Ukraine. (Source: Bangladesh Bank)
• GDP growth (FY26): 4.14% per BBS provisional estimates, up from 3.49% in FY25; the World Bank puts FY26 growth at a lower 3.8% (projecting 4.6% for FY27), while the ADB estimates 3.7% for FY26 and 4.5% for FY27. (Source: BBS / World Bank / ADB)
• Foreign exchange reserves: $37.35 billion gross at end-August 2026 ($32.44 billion under IMF BPM6 methodology), up from $31.17 billion a year earlier. (Source: BSS)
• Remittance inflow: $2.97 billion in August 2026, up 22.5% year-on-year; the overall balance of payments posted a $6.61 billion surplus in FY2025-26, nearly double FY25’s $3.39 billion. (Source: BSS)

Global Signal

Brent crude is trading at $104.30 a barrel, down 2.14% on the day but still elevated on the ongoing Hormuz standoff; WTI sits at $92.82, down 1.89% (Source: OilPrice.com).

The Strait of Hormuz remains the story behind that price: tanker transits have crashed to single digits this week as the seven-month US-Iran war continues, though Washington and Tehran are reportedly reviving a June framework that would trade a phased reopening of the strait for sanctions relief (Source: OilPrice.com). Because Bangladesh imports roughly 85% of its crude, any breakthrough here would be the single biggest lever on local fuel prices.

Russia’s war in Ukraine ground on with no resolution in sight: Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Europe at the UN General Assembly of blocking US-backed peace talks, while President Trump urged Ukrainian President Zelenskyy to “settle” with Putin. Both sides intensified strikes this week in what officials describe as the deadliest summer since the 2022 invasion (Source: CBS News).

In Gaza, Hamas condemned the US-created Board of Peace for excluding the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, from Gaza operations, accusing the board of aligning with Israel’s position. Israeli strikes killed seven Palestinians in Gaza over the past 48 hours, and Israeli forces raided Birzeit University in the West Bank during student exams (Source: Al Jazeera).

The US Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate by 25 basis points to a target range of 3.75%–4.00% on 16 September — its first hike since 2023 — in a unanimous 12-0 vote under new Chair Kevin Warsh, citing persistently elevated inflation.

Wall Street closed higher on 25 September: the Dow Jones Industrial Average at 51,828.62 (+0.93%), the S&P 500 at 7,743.41 (+0.51%), and the Nasdaq Composite at 27,068.72 (+0.48%) (Source: Google Finance).

Bitcoin traded at $84,360, down 1.79% on the day and roughly 25% lower over the past year (Source: Yahoo Finance).

AI This Week

Workplace research circulating this week converges on a consistent theme: as generative AI takes over routine research, drafting and first-pass reporting, the professional skills gaining value are precisely the ones AI still struggles with — framing the right question, judging when an AI answer is wrong, and navigating the human side of a decision. Separately, on-device AI is maturing quickly enough to start challenging cloud-only assistants on latency-sensitive, always-on tasks, a shift worth watching for teams building customer-facing tools.

For Dhaka teams: if AI already handles your team’s first-draft reports or customer replies, the more useful hiring and promotion test isn’t “can they use ChatGPT” — it’s whether someone can catch a wrong AI answer and knows what question should have been asked in the first place.

ORAWEK Note

There’s a strange split-screen quality to this morning’s economy: foreign investors are quietly buying Dhaka stocks again, and reserves keep climbing — yet the same week brought a Tk20 fuel-price hike and a UN committee deciding our LDC timeline. Recovery here rarely arrives as one clean signal. It comes in pieces, and reading them together is the job.

— Orawek