The Padma Oil Company Limited (Bengali: পদ্মা অয়েল কোম্পানী লিমিটেড) formerly known as Burmah Eastern Limited, is a subsidiary of Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC), a statutory organization of the government under the Ministry of Power, Energy, and Mineral Resources. It is registered with the joint-stock company as a public limited company under the Company Act 1913. The company's head office is located on Strand Road in Chittagong, officially known as Chattogram. It is one of three state owned oil distribution companies in Bangladesh with the others being Jamuna Oil Company and Meghna Petroleum Limited. (Full article...)
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Corruption in Bangladesh has been a continuing problem. According to all major ranking institutions, Bangladesh routinely finds itself among the most corrupt countries in the world.
As of 2001, corruption in the public sector was "endemic, chronic and all pervasive". In Transparency International's 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index, which scored 180 countries on a scale from 0 ("highly corrupt") to 100 ("very clean"), Bangladesh scored 24. When ranked by score, Bangladesh ranked 149th among the 180 countries in the Index, where the country ranked first is perceived to have the most honest public sector. For comparison with worldwide scores, the best score was 90 (ranked 1), the average score was 43, and the worst score was 11 (ranked 180). For comparison with regional scores, the highest score among the countries of the Asia Pacific region was 85, the average score was 45 and the lowest score was 17. Introducing the 2020 Corruption Perceptions Index, Executive Director Iftekharuzzaman of Transparency International Bangladesh commented, "Of the eight South Asian countries, Bangladesh remains second lowest both in score and rank — better than only Afghanistan." (Full article...)
Sylhet is known for its tea plantations and natural beauty. The city has a history dating back to the 14th century and has been ruled by various dynasties and empires, including the Mughals, British, and the Nawabs of Bengal. The city is also home to several important landmarks, such as the Shah Jalal Dargah, which is one of the holiest sites in Bangladesh and attracts thousands of pilgrims every year. (Full article...)
Sitakunda is one of the oldest sites of human habitation in Bangladesh. During much of its history, it was ruled alternatively by various Buddhist rulers of Myanmar in the east and Muslims rulers of Bengal in the west. For a brief period in the 8th century, it was ruled by the Buddhist Pala Empire of India. The eastern rulers originated from the Kingdom of Arakan, the Mrauk U dynasty, Arakanese pirates and the Pagan Kingdom. The western rulers came from the Sultanate of Bengal and the Mughal province (Suba) of Bangala. European rule of Sitakunda was heralded by Portuguese privateers in 16th and 17th centuries, who ruled together with the pirates; and the British Raj in 18th and 19th centuries, who unified Sitakunda into the rest of the Chittagong District. Diderul Alam is the Current Member of parliament of Sitakunda (Full article...)
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Agriculture is the largest employment sector in Bangladesh, making up 14.2 percent of Bangladesh's GDP in 2017 and employing about 42.7 percent of the workforce. The performance of this sector has an overwhelming impact on major macroeconomic objectives like employment generation, poverty alleviation, human resources development, food security, and other economic and social forces. A plurality of Bangladeshis earn their living from agriculture. Due to a number of factors, Bangladesh's labour-intensive agriculture has achieved steady increases in food grain production despite the often unfavorable weather conditions. These include better flood control and irrigation, a generally more efficient use of fertilisers, as well as the establishment of better distribution and rural credit networks.
Although rice and jute are the primary crops, maize and vegetables are assuming greater importance. Due to the expansion of irrigation networks, some wheat producers have switched to cultivation of maize which is used mostly as poultry feed. Tea is grown in the northeast. Because of Bangladesh's fertile soil and normally ample water supply, rice can be grown and harvested three times a year in many areas. The country is among the top producers of rice (third), potatoes (seventh), tropical fruits (sixth), jute (second), and farmed fish (fifth). With 35.8 million metric tons produced in 2000, rice is Bangladesh's principal crop. In comparison to rice, wheat output in 1999 was 1.9 million tonnes (1,900,000 long tons; 2,100,000 short tons). (Full article...)
The Bengal region was a supreme power of the medieval Islamic East. In the late 7th century, Muslims from Arabia established commercial as well as religious connection within the Bengal region before the conquest, mainly through the coastal regions as traders and primarily via the ports of Chittagong. In the early 13th century, Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khalji conquered Western and part of Northern Bengal and established the first Muslim kingdom in Bengal. During the 13th century, Sufi missionaries, mystics and saints began to preach Islam in villages. The Islamic Bengal Sultanate, was founded by Shamsuddin Ilyas Shah who united Bengal on an ethno-linguistic platform. Bengal reached in her golden age during Bengal Sultanate's prosperous ruling period. Subsequently, Bengal viceroy Muhammad Azam Shah assumed the imperial throne. Mughal Bengal became increasingly independent under the Nawabs of Bengal in the 18th century. (Full article...)
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Climate change is a critical issue in Bangladesh. as the country is one of the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. In the 2020 edition of Germanwatch's Climate Risk Index, it ranked seventh in the list of countries most affected by climate calamities during the period 1999–2018. Bangladesh's vulnerability to the effects of climate change is due to a combination of geographical factors, such as its flat, low-lying, and delta-exposed topography. and socio-economic factors, including its high population density, levels of poverty, and dependence on agriculture. The impacts and potential threats include sea level rise, temperature rise, food crisis, droughts, floods, and cyclones.
Factors such as frequent natural disasters, lack of infrastructure, high population density (174 million people living in an area of 147,570 km2 ), an extractivist economy and social disparities are increasing the vulnerability of the country in facing the current changing climatic conditions. Almost every year large regions of Bangladesh suffer from more intense events like cyclones, floods and erosion. The mentioned adverse events are slowing the development of the country by bringing socio-economical and environmental systems to almost collapse. (Full article...)
The university was founded in 1921 under the Dacca University Act 1920 of the Indian Legislative Council. Nawab Bahadur Sir Khwaja Salimullah, who pioneered the university in Dhaka, donated 600 acres of land from his estate for this purpose. It is modeled after British Universities. Currently it is the largest public research university in Bangladesh, with a student body of 46,150 and a faculty of 1,992. (Full article...)
One of the world's oldest ports with a functional natural harbor for centuries, Chittagong appeared on ancient Greek and Roman maps, including on Ptolemy's world map. It was located on the southern branch of the Silk Road. In the 9th century, merchants from the Abbasid Caliphate established a trading post in Chittagong. The port fell to the Muslim conquest of Bengal during the 14th century. It was the site of a royal mint under the Delhi Sultanate, Bengal Sultanate and Mughal Empire. Between the 15th and 17th centuries, Chittagong was also a center of administrative, literary, commercial and maritime activities in Arakan, a narrow strip of land along the eastern coast of the Bay of Bengal which was under strong Bengali influence for 350 years. During the 16th century, the port became a Portuguese trading post and João de Barros described it as "the most famous and wealthy city of the Kingdom of Bengal". The Mughal Empire expelled the Portuguese and Arakanese in 1666. (Full article...)
Percentage of the population vaccinated with at least one dose as of January 17, 2022
Bangladesh began the administration of COVID-19 vaccines on 27 January 2021 while mass vaccination started on 7 February 2021.
The Oxford–AstraZeneca vaccine was the only COVID-19 vaccine authorized for emergency use from January to April 2021. Bangladesh ordered vaccines produced by Serum Institute of India; however, it delivered to Bangladesh less than half of the doses that had been agreed. After the consequent vaccine shortage, Bangladesh approved the Russian Sputnik V and Chinese Sinopharm BIBP vaccines for emergency use in late April 2021. Bangladesh also authorized the emergency use of Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to be distributed as part of COVAX. It was reported that the Bangladesh government planned to give permission to Bangladeshi-made Bangavax developed by Globe Biotech Ltd. to conduct the first clinical trial that got listed in the 'Draft landscape and tracker of Covid-19 candidate vaccines' by the World Health Organization (WHO). However, the fate of Bangavax is still uncertain due to an unknown reason. Less than 4% of Bangladesh's population had gotten two doses as of the beginning of June 2021. Bangladesh has already fully immunized more than 70% of its population and received funding from a program called Friendship. (Full article...)
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The Cinema of Bangladesh, also known as Bangla cinema, is a diverse and vibrant entity, consisting of films produced across various regions in Bangladesh, each contributing its unique linguistic and cultural perspective. Beyond the dominant Dhaka based Bengali-language film industry Dhallywood (Bengali: ঢালিউড), which is a portmanteau of "Dhaka" and "Hollywood", Bangladesh is home to cinema in several other languages and dialects. For instance, Chakma cinema from Bandarban, Garo cinema from Sherpur, Meitei and Sylheti cinema from Sylhet, Chatgaiya cinema from Chattogram. These regional cinemas play a crucial role in preserving and promoting the linguistic and cultural heritage of the country. The dominant style of Bangladeshi cinema is melodramatic cinema, which developed from 1947 to 1990 and characterizes most films to this day. Cinema was introduced in Bangladesh in 1898 by the Bradford Bioscope Company, credited to have arranged the first film release in Bangladesh. Between 1913 and 1914, the first production company, Picture House, was opened. A 1928 short silent film titled Sukumari (lit.'The Good Girl') was the first Bengali-produced film in the region. The first full-length film, The Last Kiss, was released in 1931.
Following the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan, Dhaka became the center of the Bangladeshi film industry, and has generated the majority share of revenue, production and audiences for Dhallywood films. Mukh O Mukhosh, the first Bengali-language full-length feature film, was produced in 1956. During the 1970s, many Dhallywood films were inspired by Indian films, with some of the films being unofficial remakes of those films. The industry continued to grow, and many successful Bangladeshi films were produced throughout the 1970s, 1980s and the first half of the 1990s. (Full article...)
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The textile and clothing industries provide a single source of growth in Bangladesh's rapidly developingeconomy. Exports of textiles and garments are the principal source of foreign exchange earnings. By 2002 exports of textiles, clothing, and ready-made garments (RMG) accounted for 77% of Bangladesh's total merchandise exports. Emerging as the world's second-largest exporter of ready-made garment (RMG) products, Bangladesh significantly bolstered employment within the manufacturing sector.
In 1972, the World Bank approximated the gross domestic product (GDP) of Bangladesh at US$6.29 billion, and it grew to $368 billion by 2021, with $46 billion of that generated by exports, 82% of which was ready-made garments. As of 2016 Bangladesh held the 2nd place in producing garments just after China. Bangladesh is the world's second-largest apparel exporter of Western fast fashion brands. Sixty percent of the export contracts of Western brands are with European buyers and about thirty percent with American buyers and ten percent to others. Only 5% of textile factories are owned by foreign investors, with most of the production being controlled by local investors. In the financial year 2016-2017 the RMG industry generated US$28.14 billion, which was 80.7% of the total export earnings in exports and 12.36% of the GDP; the industry was also taking on green manufacturing practices. (Full article...)
The Bangladesh Police (Bengali: বাংলাদেশ পুলিশ, romanized: Bānlādēśa puliśa) is the national law enforcement agency of Bangladesh, operating under the Ministry of Home Affairs. It plays a crucial role in maintaining peace, and enforcement of law and order within Bangladesh. Though the police are primarily concerned with the maintenance of law and order and security of persons and property of individuals, they also play a big role in the criminal justice system. Bangladesh Police played an important role during the Bangladesh Liberation War. (Full article...)
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Architecture of Bangladesh is intertwined with the architecture of the Bengal region and the broader Indian subcontinent. The architecture of Bangladesh has a long history and is rooted in Bangladesh's culture, religion and history. It has evolved over centuries and assimilated influences from social, religious and exotic communities. The architecture of Bangladesh bears a remarkable impact on the lifestyle, tradition and cultural life of Bangladeshi people. Bangladesh has many architectural relics and monuments dating back thousands of years. (Full article...)