In a blistering rebuke that laid bare the deepening fissures in the economy, RMG industrialist and Bangladesh Textile Mills Association (BTMA) President Shawkat Aziz Russell has unleashed on Chief Adviser Dr. Muhammad Yunus’s press secretary, Shafiqul Alam, branding him a “madman” whose reckless rhetoric is fueling the nation’s industrial haemorrhage.
Speaking at a tense discussion hosted by the Bangladesh Garment Buying House Association (BGBA) at a Dhaka hotel on Sunday, Russell painted a harrowing portrait of a sectorโand a countryโteetering on the brink of irreversible ruin.
“He (Shafiq) has a page (Facebook page), he embarrasses people by talking nonsense,” Russell fumed, his voice thick with frustration. “If the right person does not go to the right place, then the right decision will not be made.”
The tirade came amid escalating outrage over the interim government’s apparent indifference to the ready-made garments (RMG) juggernaut, which once propelled Bangladesh to export stardom but now symbolises its descent into stagnation.
Russell zeroed in on the unresolved saga of Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) President Mahmud Hasan Khan’s futile pleas for a private audience with Yunus. “Unfortunately, the BGMEA President has not had a meeting with the Chief Adviser so far,” Russell thundered. “Then why did you take this responsibility? The games that were played during the previous government have now started again.”
Bangladesh GDP 1.81% in first quarter of FY26โlowest in four years
Food Crisis Deepens Amid Turmoil: 16 million face severe insecurity by year-end
Bangladesh economy faces RMG crisis as BGMEA slams Yunus govt for โneglectโ
For four agonising months, Khan has been stonewalled, his repeated requests for targeted crisis talks dismissed or diluted into generic briefings, such as a recent multi-stakeholder session on Bangladesh’s looming LDC graduation in November 2026.
This, the BGMEA insists in a scathing statement, is no substitute for the “dedicated policy dialogue” desperately needed to stanch the bleeding in a $40-billion export lifeline that employs four millionโmostly womenโand accounts for over 80% of the nation’s shipments.
The snub stands in stark, infuriating contrast to the red-carpet treatment afforded to foreign suitors like SpaceX’s Starlink, whose vice president secured VIP access for talks on a $100 million satellite internet venture. “When the Vice President of Starlink comes, he is met,” Khan lamented at a Tuesday press conference. “But representatives of a $40-billion export sector are not given time.”
Government mouthpieces, including Special Assistant Faiz Ahmed Tayyab and Deputy Press Secretary Mohammad Abul Kalam Azad Majumdar, have fired back by touting the LDC meeting as sufficient engagementโclaims the BGMEA dismissed as “context-free spin” that “indirectly devalue[s] the nationโs main export sector” and reeks of misleading the public.
Russell’s fury escalated as he turned directly to Alam: “We are all dying, factories are closing, people are being laid off. โฆ Donโt you see all this? If the airport burns down, will foreign buyers place orders? The intangible damage is much greater.”
His words echoed the grim tally of devastation: Between January 2024 and March 2025, 113 RMG factories shuttered permanently, evicting 96,000 workers into a jobless abyss. From August 2024 to March 2025, another 69 closures erased 76,504 livelihoods, while wage-fueled protests triggered temporary halts at 183 facilities, including 54 in the Savar-Ashulia belt and 12 in Gazipur. Vandalism, arson, and unchecked political violence have compounded the carnageโone fatal blaze at a Beximco Group factory serving as a macabre emblem of the human cost.
This industrial implosion has rippled into a national unemployment cataclysm, with over 2.1 million jobs vaporised in the first half of Yunus’s tenure aloneโ85% borne by women, per labour unions. In the nine months ending June 2025, another 60,000 garment workers were cast adrift, swelling the ranks of the NEET generation, where youth already claim two-thirds of the dispossessed.
List of agreements with India, posted by Asif Mahmud, is false, says foreign adviser
Economy Under Threat: Investigating the surge in Bangladesh fires
Yunus to hand over Chittagong Port to US-linked DP World in December
Factories in Ashulia’s once-buzzing hubs now stand as ghostly husks, their silenced machines a requiem for the “soul of Bangladeshโs growth story,” as one despairing owner told *The Daily Star*.
Yet the RMG rot is merely the most visible fracture in an economy buckling under multifaceted collapse. The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) delivered a gut-punch on October 10: GDP growth cratered to 1.81% in the first quarter of FY26 (July-September)โthe lowest quarterly rate in four years, eclipsing even the 0.93% nadir of Covid-ravaged 2020-21. Full-year FY25 clocked in at a dismal 3.69%, the post-pandemic floor, as exports stagnated, investments evaporated, and a foreign exchange crunch strangled recovery.
Private investment has nosedived to 22.48% of GDPโa five-year low, gutting the 28.2% ambition of the 8th Five-Year Planโwhile credit to the private sector withered to 7.15% in January 2025, choked by repo rates at 10%.
Inflation, the silent reaper, has turned survival into a cruel lottery. At 8.29% in August 2025โthe region’s highest, dwarfing India’s 5.5% and Pakistan’s 7.2%โit has ravaged household ledgers, with food prices spiking 14% and rendering staples unaffordable for 70% of Bangladeshis who funnel over half their earnings into basics.
The takaโs 43% plunge against the dollar since 2021 has ignited an import-cost inferno, squeezed remittances and bloated everyday horrors: vegetables, fish, and eggs now “beyond peopleโs reach,” as families like 32-year-old seamstress Raimoni Bala’s ration meals amid soaring rents and layoff dread.
Yunusโ Misrule: Bangladesh grapples with inflation, unemployment
Prices of vegetables, fish, eggs going beyond peopleโs reach
The banking sector teeters on systemic meltdown; its veins clogged with rot. Non-performing loans (NPLs) have ballooned to Tk420,335 crore ($35 billion) by March 2025โ20.2% of total lending, Asia’s ignominious peak, up from 16.9% just six months prior.
Ten institutions, from state behemoth Janata Bank to Islami Bank, hold 71% of this toxic debt, a legacy of political meddling unhealed under Yunus. Projections warn of a 30% default cliff, with collateral coverage as low as 15-20% in non-banks, imperilling depositors and the financial edifice itself.
Yunus’ heralded fixesโcentral bank Governor Ahsan H. Mansur includedโhave sputtered, recovering a paltry $17 billion in siphoned assets while whispers of cronyism swirl around his circle.
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has fallen to $1.46 billion in 2024โhalf the annual normโscared off by volatility, US tariffs hiking to 35% on Bangladeshi goods, and performative summits yielding vaporous Chinese pledges. The World Bank, once optimistic, now forecasts a tepid 4.0% GDP clip for FY25โdown from 6-7% normsโbefore a fragile 4.8% rebound in FY26, contingent on reforms that remain mirages.
Failure to diversify beyond RMG’s “ticking time bomb” (per Policy Exchange Bangladesh) risks a debt spiral, shoving three million more into poverty by year-end and widening chasms where Yunus’ elite allies feast untouched.
“This is not just about garments,” Russell implored the government in a desperate plea. “Free us by holding elections.” With polls eyed for late 2025 or beyond, the interim regimeโcritics chargeโprioritises political vendettas over revival: VAT hikes on 100 essentials fan inflation, radical concessions breed violence (hiking production costs 50%), and anti-corruption theatre shields the powerful while the vulnerable fracture.
Former Commerce Minister and BNP Standing Committee member Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury, joined by garment and textile tycoons, amplified the chorus at the BGBA event, demanding bold strokes: EU GSP+ safeguards, FTAs with India and Japan, automation and green upgrades, and fixes for power-logistics strangleholds.
The International Chamber of Commerce Bangladesh (ICCB) warns of “economic decline” sans reforms; the Asian Development Bank (ADB) dangles a 5.1% FY26 lifelineโif action dawns now.
Economists like Mustafizur Rahman decry a “stagnant” financial core yielding “almost no success” after six months of inertia. In the shadows of shuttered looms and empty plates, one truth endures: 20 years of hard-won achievements have evaporated in one year of misrule, leaving a nationโnot at a crossroads, but in freefall.
English