On a humid evening in Narayanganj, the lights inside a mid-sized textile mill flicker again. The owner has learned a new choreography over the past two years: slow the machines when gas pressure drops, crank the diesel generator when it fails completely, postpone the bulk dyeing run until the grid looks stable enough to finish a large order. On his office wall hangs a framed photograph from a different era — when cheap, uninterrupted power and a steady flow of imported fuel made planning simple. Today, after an IMF programme, a currency slide and an energy crunch, stability looks more like managed scarcity than comfortable normality.

From Headline Panic to Managed Tightness

The decision to enter an IMF programme was framed as pre-emptive — a way to shore up confidence and rebuild foreign-exchange reserves before a full-blown crisis forced harsher medicine. Since then, the narrative has been one of cautious recovery. Official reserves no longer chase the floor; the most acute import bottlenecks have eased; the taka has been allowed to move more flexibly. On paper, Bangladesh has avoided the kind of dramatic breakdown seen in some neighbours.

Yet the post-review economy remains defined by tightness. Importers still complain of delays in opening letters of credit. Fuel distributors still juggle payments and shipments. The banking system, long accustomed to a heavily managed exchange rate, has had to adjust to a more volatile, less predictable regime. Behind the calm language of staff reports lies a country living close to the edge of its external constraint: spending hard currency carefully, stretching local resources, keeping just enough confidence in place to prevent a run for the exits.

The Pressure Stack: Reserves, Energy, Politics

Bangladesh is not dealing with a single problem. It is managing a stack of overlapping pressures that reinforce one another. A useful way to think about the post-review landscape is to separate the layers without pretending they are independent.

The IMF review focuses on the first two layers: reserves and macro policy. Bangladesh’s long-term prospects, however, depend just as much on what happens in garments, remittances and domestic politics.

Garments: The Engine That Cannot Stall

For years, the story of Bangladesh’s development has been the story of readymade garments. The sector created millions of jobs, anchored urbanisation and supplied most of the foreign exchange that paid for fuel, machinery and food imports. In the post-review period, that centrality has only increased. When global demand softens or buyers shift orders in response to cost, compliance or shipping concerns, the effect shows up directly in export earnings and reserve accumulation.

Factory owners describe a world that is simultaneously more competitive and more demanding. Buyers want tighter delivery times, clearer traceability, and higher environmental and labour standards, while still pushing for low prices. At the same time, domestic costs have risen. Energy is less predictable, imported inputs are more expensive after currency adjustments, and wages — rightly — have had to rise from very low levels. The result is a squeeze on margins in a sector that the state relies on as an external lifeline.

Inside the Mill: A Micro Vignette

In a six-storey factory on the outskirts of Dhaka, the HR manager flips through a stack of CVs from job seekers. Many have completed secondary school; some list basic IT or English courses. The roles on offer are narrower: sewing operators, helpers, quality checkers. Even in a successful exporting plant, most of the new work remains low-wage, repetitive and tightly measured. Promotions exist, but they are limited; supervisory tiers are thin.

For the workers, the job is both an opportunity and a ceiling. It brings cash income and some stability in a volatile city, yet it rarely opens pathways into more complex roles. For the economy, this duality captures Bangladesh’s wider challenge: the same sector that sustains macro stability can also trap large numbers of young people in positions that are difficult to upgrade. As long as garments dominate, growth and vulnerability are bound together.

Energy: Capacity on Paper, Shortages in Practice

Bangladesh’s power system is a study in contrast. Installed generation capacity looks generous; in some categories, it even appears to exceed peak demand. On the ground, businesses and households still live with outages, voltage dips and unexpected load management. The explanation lies in the composition of that capacity and the constraints of fuel and finance.

Over the past decade, the country contracted significant thermal generation — much of it reliant on imported fuel and designed under assumptions of easier financing and cheap energy. When global prices spiked and reserves came under pressure, running all that capacity as originally planned became fiscally and politically difficult. Some plants operate below capacity; others sit idle while still generating capacity payments. Meanwhile, gas supply struggles to keep up, and investments in domestic renewables and grid upgrades lag behind policy rhetoric.

The post-review period has seen efforts to rationalise tariffs, cut back on the most expensive generation and expand solar. But progress is uneven. For exporters, the critical question is not how much capacity exists on spreadsheets, but whether electricity arrives reliably at the right voltage when a production run is on a deadline.

Reserves: Less Free Space Than the Headline Suggests

Attention often centres on a single number: how many months of import cover the central bank can claim. In Bangladesh’s case, that number has improved from the most alarming lows, giving officials breathing room. Yet the usable portion of reserves — once swaps, deposits and other encumbrances are stripped out — is tighter than the headline suggests. Meeting IMF floors requires discipline; so does paying for essential imports in a world where commodity prices can still surprise.

This is why import management remains cautious even after the review. Authorities do not want queues at petrol stations or shortages of basic goods, but they also cannot easily return to the more liberal import environment of earlier years. The outcome is a form of quiet triage: essential inputs prioritised, less vital items delayed, luxury or non-essential goods discouraged through administrative and pricing signals. For ordinary households, the effect shows up less as outright scarcity and more as prices that feel permanently high relative to incomes.

The Taka, Banks and the Politics of the Rate

A more flexible exchange-rate regime was one of the programme’s core planks. In theory, flexibility should help absorb external shocks and reduce parallel-market gaps. In practice, shifting from a tightly managed system to a more market-linked one exposes fault lines. Banks, long used to implicit guidance on rates, now have to manage greater volatility in their own balance sheets. Importers and exporters navigate a world where forward planning is harder. Households see imported goods becoming more expensive and adjust consumption accordingly.

Politically, currency moves are delicate. A sharp depreciation can improve export competitiveness and attract remittances back into formal channels, but it also feeds inflation and creates headlines that opposition parties can weaponise. The post-review compromise has been to allow movement, but not so much that it feels uncontrolled. Whether this intermediate path can hold if external conditions worsen is an open question.

Remittances: The Elastic Buffer

For decades, Bangladeshi workers abroad have been an invisible stabiliser. Their remittances finance household consumption, small investments and, indirectly, the external account. The choice between formal banking channels and informal systems such as hundi is sensitive to policy signals. When the domestic exchange rate feels artificially strong, informal channels often offer better returns; when the official rate adjusts and incentives improve, flows can move back toward the formal system.

Post-review, authorities have leaned on this lever — adjusting rates and incentives to coax more remittances through banks. The results are visible but fragile. Global job markets for migrant workers are changing; competition from other labour-exporting countries is real. A remittance strategy that relies solely on tweaking exchange rates will eventually face limits. Complementary policies — bilateral labour agreements, protection for workers abroad, and support for productive use of remitted funds at home — will determine whether this buffer remains elastic or frays.

A Comparative Glimpse: Bangladesh and Its Peers

Bangladesh’s post-IMF story is often lumped together with those of other South Asian economies that faced external stress. The similarities are real — but so are the differences.

Compared with these peers, Bangladesh has so far avoided default and preserved growth. That is an achievement — but also a source of complacency risk. “Not as bad as the neighbours” is not the same as “on a secure path”.

The Silent Politics of Stabilisation

Macroeconomic debates in Bangladesh are often framed as technical: how fast to raise energy tariffs, how much to tighten credit, how aggressively to police imports. Beneath those choices lie political calculations. The government wants to preserve its reputation for delivering growth and infrastructure; it also wants to avoid the visible pain that deep austerity can bring to urban and peri-urban constituencies.

This leads to a certain style of stabilisation: less about dramatic cuts, more about spreading discomfort across sectors and time. Businesses take on more of the cost of instability through diesel bills and production delays. Households absorb higher prices without always seeing them labelled as “reform”. The state manages headlines as much as it manages balance sheets. The risk is that the country ends up with the worst of both worlds: reforms too cautious to unlock a genuinely more competitive, diversified economy, but harsh enough to erode trust among those who feel the squeeze.

Three Futures for Post-Review Bangladesh

The choices made over the next few years will push Bangladesh toward one of several possible trajectories. None is preordained; all are shaped by decisions about energy, exports, finance and politics.

Status Quo Drift

In the first scenario, the country continues with incremental adjustments. Reserves remain just high enough, power just stable enough, garments just competitive enough. Growth persists, but so do vulnerabilities. Diversification beyond garments and traditional remittances is slow. The economy lives permanently close to its external limit, relying on good luck in commodity markets and the patience of international partners.

Partial Fix, Uneven Resilience

In the second, reforms in a few key areas — energy pricing, remittance incentives, banking governance — begin to bite. More investment flows into renewables and grid upgrades; remittances shift more firmly into formal channels; some export diversification takes hold. The system becomes more resilient to shocks, but gaps remain: informality stays high, governance in parts of the financial system lags, and political contestation limits the depth of structural change.

Deep Reform, New Model

In the third, the post-review period becomes a catalyst for a more serious reset. Energy policy shifts decisively toward domestic renewables and efficiency; loss-making arrangements in power and finance are tackled; industrial strategy moves beyond garments into higher-value segments; labour and education policy aim to upgrade skills rather than just expand low-cost employment. Politically, this path requires more transparency — about who benefits from old contracts and who pays for transition — than the current system is comfortable offering. It is also the path with the strongest chance of turning this moment of constraint into a platform for the next stage of development.

The Real Question Behind the Numbers

By the time the next IMF review cycle rolls around, the metrics will be easy to track: reserve levels, fiscal balances, tariff adjustments, growth rates. Harder to capture is whether Bangladesh has used this period to shift its underlying development model. Is it still a low-cost garment hub juggling imported energy — or is it becoming a more diversified, energy-secure, skills-deep economy with multiple engines?

The answer will not be found only in central-bank charts or programme matrices. It will be visible in how often the lights flicker in factories like the one in Narayanganj; in whether new graduates crowd into the same narrow set of opportunities; in how confidently migrants choose to send money home through official channels; and in whether citizens see stabilisation as something done to them or something done with them. After the review, the real test begins.