Thinking Aloud: Volume VIII, Issue 3: August 2021

The August 2021 issue of Thinking Aloud focuses on “Covid-19 and Development Challenges of Bangladesh”. The first page article titled “Challenges of SMEs in the time of the pandemic” emphasizes that the resonant performance of SMEs is critical for the recovery of the overall economy in the pandemic context. However, the ongoing pandemic has had some intense impacts on the SME sector of the country as well, and the recovery path for many SMEs is likely to be uncertain. The article suggests several policies and support measures to help the SME sectors come out of the crisis, including deferring income and profit tax payments, providing tax reliefs, easing debt repayment schedules and rent and utility charge payments, providing soft loans (working capital) at low-interest rates, ensuring salary subsidies for job protection, introducing temporary regulations to prevent large-scale lay-off, and allowing alternative work arrangements (including short-time leave). The second and third pages of this issue present two more articles drawing on the SANEM Household Survey 2020. The article titled “Impact of the pandemic on education sector in Bangladesh: Findings from SANEM’s household https://bes.org/valium-online/ survey” analyses the precarious impacts of Covid-19 on the education sector, which could result in permanent loss of human capital with severe long-term consequences. The article concludes that a medium to long-term policy framework addressing the digital divide, as well as adequate aid and scholarships for the disadvantaged students, is mandatory for the education sector rejuvenation. The article titled “Household’s coping strategies during the pandemic: Findings from SANEM’s household survey” examines the nature of the crisis faced by the households along with associated coping strategies and assessed the potential consequences in the short term to long term. The article suggests that a universal social security programme for all poor, including new poor households, large-scale employment generation programmes, particularly focusing on the youth, along with more active and coordinated collaboration between the government, development partners, and non-government organisations, will be crucial to mitigating the adverse impacts of the pandemic. The fourth page draws attention to the events in July 2021 and the forthcoming 6th SANEM Annual Economists’ Conference (SAEC) 2021 which will be held on 4-5 December 2021.