Bangladesh’s economy today resembles a stalled engine at the edge of a cliff. It is sputtering, overheating, and showing no sign that anyone in the driver’s seat knows which lever to pull. This is not a partisan insult; it is an observable reality. One doesn’t need economists, think tanks, or glossy reports to understand it. That’s only need to walk into a kitchen, a factory gate, or a crowded bus to feel it.
The interim government inherited an economy hollowed out by years of plunder, capital flight, and institutionalized corruption under Sheikh Hasina’s authoritarian rule. That much is indisputable. What is equally indisputable—and far more uncomfortable—is that the economy remains largely where it was left: fragile, directionless, and deteriorating. The promise that political change would quickly translate into economic stabilization has not been met. Not even close.
There was optimism after Hasina’s fall. History often produces such moments. In Eastern Europe after 1989, in Indonesia after Suharto, in Tunisia after Ben Ali—political rupture created the illusion that economic recovery would follow almost automatically. Bangladesh’s interim rulers seemed to believe the same. They assumed goodwill would substitute for policy, and moral legitimacy would attract capital. It hasn’t.
International institutions lined up with pledges. The World Bank, ADB, IMF, and wealthy donor states promised billions. The Bangladesh Investment Development Authority spent enormous sums hosting the Bangladesh Investment Summit 2025, flying in investors from 50 countries and triumphantly announcing immediate commitments worth $320 million. The reality? The money never came. Promises evaporated. Capital remained cautious, then absent.
Even the interim Head Muhammad Yunus, touring capitals and boardrooms, urging investors to “give Bangladesh a chance,” returned with little more than polite applause. Investors are not moved by speeches; they are moved by signals. And Bangladesh is sending the wrong ones.
The Center for Policy Dialogue recently put it bluntly: the economy is in its worst condition in years. Investment is at a historic low. The country faces a real risk of being trapped in middle-income stagnation—too expensive to compete with low-wage economies, too weak institutionally to attract high-value investment. This is not ideological rhetoric. It is arithmetic.
But again, statistics only confirm what ordinary citizens already know. Prices keep rising. Incomes are shrinking. Jobs are disappearing. Hundreds of factories have shut down. Those still operating are cutting production. Unemployment is surging, quietly but relentlessly. Imports and exports are stagnant. Foreign loans and aid flows are thinning. The government itself is struggling to meet basic fiscal obligations.
Take the gas crisis, a particularly revealing failure. Industrial production—especially garments, the backbone of Bangladesh’s economy—is being crippled by gas shortages. Yet this shortage makes little sense. Nearly 75% of gas-dependent power plants are currently idle. The demand simply isn’t there to justify such scarcity. What exists instead is mismanagement—of supply, distribution, and priorities. This is not fate. It is a failure.
The stock market tells a similar story. The notorious cronies of the Awami League era may be gone, but the market remains lifeless. Capital has not rotated into productive channels. Where is the money going? No one seems able—or willing—to say. Transparency, once promised loudly, has arrived softly, if at all.
Then there is the matter of stolen wealth. The interim government began its tenure with dramatic declarations about recovering billions siphoned abroad during the Hasina years. Not a single taka has been brought back. Not one. Meanwhile, remittances and foreign reserves have increased—but not because of government brilliance. They have increased because millions of migrant workers continue to send money home out of obligation, not optimism.
Time matters. Eighteen months is not a short period, especially in a developing country with no margin for delay. Economic recovery requires speed: decisive planning, credible reforms, and swift execution. Instead, the interim government has drifted. It has failed to stabilize even the most basic indicators, let alone chart a path forward.
Some observers now voice a darker suspicion: that the government’s passivity is strategic. That by leaving the economy in shambles, it intends to box in the next elected government, ensuring instability, public frustration, and political vulnerability. Whether or not this is true, the perception itself is corrosive—and politics, as we know, often runs on perception.
Economic stability is not a technocratic luxury. It is the foundation of social order. When livelihoods collapse, resentment grows. Crime rises. Extremism finds oxygen. We have seen this movie before. Venezuela’s political collapse followed economic implosion. Iran’s internal unrest is rooted as much in economic suffocation as in political repression. In both cases, sovereignty itself became fragile.
Bangladesh is not immune. In fact, it has already lived a version of this story. The fall of Sheikh Hasina was not driven solely by demands for democracy. It was fueled by an economy gutted by corruption, by lives made unbearable through inflation, unemployment, and inequality. When economics fails, politics follows—often violently.
The interim government has one month left. It will not rescue the economy in that time. But it can still do something meaningful: leave behind a coherent, directional framework for recovery. A clear set of priorities. A credible roadmap. A signal to investors, citizens, and the next government that Bangladesh understands the depth of its crisis—and intends to confront it honestly. Anything less would not just be incompetence. It would be negligence. And history is rarely kind to governments that confuse the two.
