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আজকের Agenda: What is Driving the Poverty Reversal in Bangladesh?

Date: Saturday, 13 September 2025
Time: 8:30 PM (BST)
Venue: Live on Facebook

আজকের Agenda, a flagship policy conversation series of Power and Participation Research Centre (PPRC), returned on 13 September 2025 after a hiatus. Initiated in 2020 under the leadership of Dr. Hossain Zillur Rahman, Executive Chairman, PPRC, the series seeks to broaden policy discourse beyond formal policy circles by engaging voices from policymakers, academicians, civil society, students, and grassroots actors.

Context

The latest State of the Real Economy survey conducted by PPRC revealed a worrying reversal in Bangladesh’s poverty trends:

  • 27.93% of the population are poor (Upper Poverty Line).
  • 9.35% are in extreme poverty.

These findings mark a setback to Bangladesh’s earlier progress in poverty reduction, raising urgent questions about the underlying causes—income erosion, inflationary pressures, labour-market stress, rising indebtedness, and household vulnerabilities.

Against this backdrop, the September 2025 episode of আজকের Agenda—titled “What is Driving the Poverty Reversal in Bangladesh?”—brought together distinguished economists and policy thinkers to examine these challenges and debate the course-corrections needed.

Host

  • Dr. Hossain Zillur Rahman
    Executive Chairman, PPRC

Discussants

  • Prof. Dr. M. A. Sattar Mandal, Former Vice-Chancellor, Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU)
  • Dr. Fahmida Khatun, Executive Director, Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD)
  • Dr. Imran Matin, Executive Director, BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD)
  • Dr. Selim Raihan, Executive Director, South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (SANEM)

Media Coverage

The event and its findings received wide coverage across national media: