The purpose of this study is to identify the effectiveness of satellite images in detecting the areas of rice production in the Barisal of Bangladesh. We also investigated the effect of climate change on the crop production through comparative analysis of rice production area and production statistics with climate data at multi-temporal time scale. This analysis found that the classification of rice fields extracted through satellite image and made as the number of rice cultivation areas did not exceed 10 percent of the statistical data. Climate data analysis showed that the average temperature during the ripening stage has the greatest impact on Boro’s production. It would be more make sense if you can describe the results of how precipitation is also important for rice production in addition to temperature. Therefore, it is believed that this research could serve as a key basis for solving food security issues due to climate change.

Corporate governance has received massive attention in academic research nowadays due to several recent corporate failures. Inefficiency of corporate governance mechanisms have driven the minds of the researchers and the policy makers to look with more insights into this area. Board composition, as part of corporate governance mechanism, plays a significant role to achieve company’s goals or objectives and ensure transparency and accountability. The objective of this study is to find out the efficiency of board composition through board size, independent directors and female directors on firm performance in the listed manufacturing firms of Bangladesh. In this study, a sample of 162 firm years are considered as the sample during the period of 2011 to 2016. This study finds that large board is the significant explanatory variable in improving firm performance. This study also shows that board independence and female directors have no significant association with firm performance which implies that instrument of corporate governance mechanism particularly board composition is very weak. This study recommends that code of corporate governance, specially the role of independent directors and female directors, should be reformed in the light of cultural and institutional context along with the effective enforcement.

In 21 st Century business world, services are carried out in multifaceted, competitive and rationality manner that are characterized by evolving many factors, which are often unpredictable. On-the-go banking is a product in financial sector. However, it faces serious pitfalls being it riskiness. Bank customers compete for time-saving options. On contrary, PCBs compete for marginalizing its operating costs for enhancing its revenues. On strategic tactics, PCBs targets city customers in multi-facets including offering incentives for enhanced usages of on-the-go banking. Influencing customer’s intention, attitude and behavior in banking, PCBs also offers incentive under market system along with often informational asymmetry. However, it causes exploitation. In most cases customers don’t read terms & conditions of services. They don’t save contract-copy. These weaknesses cause abuses. Customer faces hidden charges, extra fees, account hacked. Addressing the issue, Voluntary Insurance Option is proposed where PCBs will introduce it as a product of bank-services. Transferring risk away from customer will benefit both PCBs and bank-customers. This product can attract new customers who were on the brink using digital banking but just felt it was too risky. This model can facilitate the parties involved for increasing usage of on-the-go banking-services while customers can maintain optimal utility of usages.

Environmental awareness and its relation to the development of economy has garnered increased attention in recent years. Researchers, over the years, have argued that sustainable development warrants for minimizing environmental degradation since one depends on the other. This study analyzes the relationship between environmental degradation (carbon emission taken as proxy for degradation), economic growth, total energy consumption and industrial production index growth in Bangladesh from year 1998 to 2013. This study uses Vector Autoregression (VAR) Model and variance decomposition of VAR to analyze the effect of these variables on carbon emission and vice-versa. The findings of VAR model suggest that industrial production and GDP per capita has significant relationship with carbon emission. Further analysis through variance decomposition shows carbon emission has consistent impact on industrial production over time, whereas, industrial production has high impact on emission in the short run which fades in the long run which is consistent with Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. Carbon emission rising along with GDP per capita and at the same time having low impact in the long run on industrial index indicates there may be other sources of pollution introduced with the rise in income of the economy over time.

Banks play a crucial role in bringing stability and economic development through their expected contribution in proper financial resource mobilisation across the economy. Despite the importance, there is little focus in recent literature which provided the empirical evidence how the global financial crisis affect the bank efficiency in Bangladesh. Thus, this paper aims to examine the effect of the global financial crisis and other factors on the efficiency of Bangladesh commercial banks. By employing the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method, we computed the technical efficiency of individual banks operating in the Bangladesh banking sector during 2000 to 2013. The empirical findings indicate that the Bangladesh banking sector has exhibited the highest efficiency level during 2001, while efficiency seems to be at the lowest level during 2010. The study finds that crisis along with bank size, capital adequacy ratio, return on average equity and real interest rate have a significant effect on bank efficiency in Bangladesh. In order to keep the sound financial development of Bangladesh, banks operating in the Bangladesh banking sector have to consider all the potential technologies which could improve their profit efficiency levels, since the main motive of banks is to maximise shareholders’ value or wealth through profit maximisation.

It is difficult to measure precipitation due to spatial and temporal variability. In this study we analyzed the variability of precipitation of high- and low-rainfall regions in Bangladesh using Precipitation Concentration Index (PCI) from the data of two meteorological stations. We compared PCI values for various periods such as annual, supra-seasonal, seasonal, three and two-months. Most previous studies have analyzed the long-term precipitation in Bangladesh. We analyzed the variabilities from long-term to short-term and tried to characterize the irregular precipitation. In the result, the precipitation in Bangladesh was mostly concentrated between two and four months of the year. Future research will require more station data to understand the more detailed precipitation patterns in Bangladesh.

Purpose - While microfinance institutions(MFIs) from Bangladesh, such as Grameen Bank, received worldwide recognition and the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, however, there is a paucity of research that provided a comprehensive discussion on the characteristics of the microfinance industry. Hence, the aim of this paper is to discuss some important aspects of the microfinance sector in Bangladesh. Research design, data, and methodology - This study used secondary sources of data, such as annual reports of the Microcredit Regulatory Authority (MRA) and the World Bank database in its descriptive analysis. Results - This study found that Bangladesh has made remarkable progress in her socio-economic and economic development in the last few decades. It is also generally perceived that microfinance has placed significant contribution on such socio-economic development. While microfinance observed unprecedented growth domestically, however, the regulatory framework is still rather weak, and a majority of the MFIs are found to be concentrated in the well-off areas (e.g., Dhaka, Chittagong etc.). Conclusions - The findings are significantly important for the parties who are interested to know the microfinance sector in Bangladesh. To some extent, the findings of this study will provide policy implications that may benefit the industry.

Purpose – The purpose of this research study is to make a comparative analysis between corporate governance guidelines 2016 and 2012 and area of further improvement to ensure better governance, accountability and transparency. Research design, data and methodology - This research study is mainly based on the corporate governance guidelines 2016 and 2012 issued by the regulatory authority known as Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC). Results - This study finds that corporate governance guideline 2012 include some new issues such as criteria and qualification of independent director; some additional statements in the directors’ report; mandatory requirement of separation of chairman and CEO; constitution of audit committee; chairman of audit committee; role of audit committee, duties of CEO and CFO on financial statements; and collection of compliance certificate from professional accountant or secretary in compare to corporate governance guidelines 2016. Conclusions – This study suggests that the regulatory authority should include more issues such as tax management and reporting, risk management and reporting; individual and overall performance analysis of the board and independent directors; separate nomination and compensation committee; assessment of true independence of the board and its supporting committees to ensure higher quality of corporate governance and transparency.

Shareholders solely depend on annual reports to make investment, credit and other decisions. Investors expect that information should be reliable, relevant, comparable, consistent and thus easy to use for decision making. But whether the importance of annual reports to all shareholders is equally significant is a question of research. Thus, this research study tries to find out the importance of reading annual reports to the investors. A questionnaire survey is conducted on investors considering thirty one general shareholders and six brokers. This research based survey finds that most of the shareholders have no knowledge about accounting or finance and they have little knowledge about capital markets due to lack of training. This study also finds that general shareholders read an annual report at least moderately except value added statement, chairman’s review, director’s report and rumor. This study recommends human resource should be developed through adequate training, and annual reports should provide transparent and quality information which will ultimately increase the confidence of investors.

Although the microfinance sector in Bangladesh is mainly driven by Non-Governmental-Organizations (NGOs), there are other types of Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) that also provide financial services to the poor. Despite the criticism of microfinance programs, the current poverty situation in Bangladesh still requires such programs for consistently battling poverty. Hence, the aim of this paper is to profile the microfinance sector based on their legal status and investigate any possible differences (if any) between them in various aspects. After a thorough investigation of the sector, it was found that around 33 million of the clients are being served by the mainstream MFIs (NGO and Grameen Bank) while another 10-15 million clients are served by other types of MFIs (financial cooperatives, credit unions, various ministries etc.), accounting for the one-third of the total population in Bangladesh. While the mainstream MFIs basically works with poor, other categories of MFIs are concerned with relatively wealthy clients. Looking into the financial performance and social intermediation of the MFIs, the NGO-MFIs performed better than other types of MFIs in the sector.

본 연구는 방글라데시의 친환경농업 실태와 농업인들의 인식을 바탕으로 친환경농업 개발에 대한 정부의 역할과 정책적 대안을 모색하고자 하였다. 연구 자료는 방글라데시 탕가일 지역의 농업인을 대상으로 유기농가 100가구와 일반농가 100가구를 무작위로 추출하여 설문조사를 통하여 수집되었다. 인구 과밀의 방글라데시 정부는 식량안보를 위하여 지력 저하 및 환경악화를 방지하고자 많은 노력을 기울이고 있다. 즉 지속 가능한 농업개발을 위하여 통합해충관리(IPM), 통합작물 관리(ICM)를 비롯하여 토양의 비옥도 개선, 페로몬트랩이나 자연 천적을 이용한 해충방제 등 다양한 프로그램을 운영하고 있다. 농업인들의 의견 조사에 따르면 친환경농업에 대한 정부의 역할은 긍정적으로 평가하고 있으나 정책이나 관련 프로그램은 아직 부족한 것으로 나타났다. 일반농가인 경우 극히 소수 농가만이 친환경농업을 실행하고 있는데, 이는 관련기술에 대한 지식의 부족과 유기농 비료 등의 자재 부족이 친환경농업을 실행하는데 가장 큰 어려움이라 지적하고 있다. 일반 농가의 39%는 유기농업 의사를 보이고 있지만 마케팅시설의 부족과 농사 실패에 대한 두려움 등을 유기농으로 전환하지 못하는 주요 이유로 들고 있다. 일반농가의 일부(17%)만이 정부의 농업교육 프로그램임인 통합해충관리(IPM)과정을 이수하고 있다. 정부의 유기농 정책은 거의 전무하며 NGO들의 지원에 의하여 꾸준하게 진행되고 있을 뿐이다. 따라서 농업인들은 통합해충관리(IPM), 유기농 퇴비, 페로몬트랩이나 자연 천적 등 매우 다양한 농민교육프로그램들을 정부 주도적으로 실시하여야 하며 친환경농업정책을 보다 명확하게 규정하기를 요구하고 있다. 비교적 젊고 교육수준이 높은 소규모 농업인들 이 유기농에 적극적임을 알 수 있다. 유기농의 평균 농지규모는 0.246ha, 유기농 평균 경력은 7.63년, 일반농가대비 농가수 입은 11.4% 높게 나타났고 비교적 소농들이 높은 수익률을 보이고 있다. 소비자의 신뢰, 마케팅시설, 생산자단체나 조직의 부족 등이 유기농가들의 가장 큰 애로점이 되고 있고, 유기농산품의 표준화를 위하여 정부의 인증제도와 인증기관 설립이 필요함을 지적하고 있다. 유기농을 보다 활성화하기 위해서는 정부 주도하에 마케팅을 비롯하여 교육, 수출 및 각종 장려책 등이 마련되어야 할 것이다.

This study attempted to examine the profitability and marketing costs of seed potato under contract farming system of BADC (Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation) with the help of primary and secondary data. Total 45 contract farmers were randomly selected. Attempts were made to calculate costs, returns and profitability of seed potato production under contract farming system, and to identify marketing channels of seed potato. The field level data were collected by a farm survey during the months of April 2005 through direct interviews with contract farmers and registered dealers using a structure survey questionnaire. The results showed that the gross return per hectare was Tk. 252,464 for all categories of farms. Cost of seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation and human labor were critical inputs for profitability of seed potato. Cobb-Douglas production function analysis was used to determine the effects of the key variables to seed potato production under contract farming system. The elasticity of seed potato production was at 0.727 for all categories of farms. The findings exhibited that the summation of elasticity of different inputs for seed potato production was less than one, implying that the production function exhibited decreasing returns to scale. Registered dealers and Upazila Sales Centers were involved in seed potato marketing formed a straightforward marketing channel. The total marketing costs of registered dealers were Tk. 759.49 per ton of seed potato. The net marketing margin of registered dealers was estimated at Tk. 465.51 per ton of seed potato. The selected contract farmers and registered dealers faced a number of problems and some of recommendations were suggested.

The present study was initiated to explore the yield potential of bushbean by exploiting the interaction of variety, sowing time, and fertilizers containing N, P, and K Two varieties namely BARI Bushbean 1 and BARI Bushbean 2, three levels of fertilizer viz. control (N0P0K0 ), medium (N20P30K30 ), high (N40P60K60 ) and three sowing times (November 15, December 1 and December 15) were considered as treatment variables. Among the varieties, BARI Bushbean 2 always showed better performance for most of the yield and yield attributes duly attributed by the application of fertilizers ~circleda N: P: K = 40: 60: 60 respectively. The highest seed yield (1375.17 kg/ha) was recorded when the crop was sown on the 15th November with the supplemented soil nutrition status as above. The influence of sowing times indicate that there is a gradual trend of decreasing in seed yield and other associated parameters after first sowing (15th~;November ). The results of this study suggest that the multi-locational trial under varied sowing times with soil nutrition might potentially increase the long-term adaptation of bushbean in Bangladesh.

A field study was conducted to develop an economically suitable combination of organic and inorganic fertilizers for sugarcane cultivation in sandy acidic soil of a commercial sugarcane farm under Old Himalayan Piedmont Plain of Bangladesh. Results revealed that the treatment T4 which received 75~% of Recommended fertilizers (N 120, P 35, K 100, S 25, Zn 2 kg ha-1 ) + 10 Mg ha-1 Rice mill ash + Mg ha-1 press mud significantly produced higher sugarcane yield (72.34 Mg ha-1 ) among all the treatments except T5 having 100~% of Recommended fertilizers + 10 Mg ha-1 Rice mill ash + 10 Mg ha-1 press mud, which was identical. T4 also gave the highest net economic benefit at Bangladesh Taka 15,920.47 per hectare from the added nutrient management. Thus, the integrated use with organic and inorganic fertilizer is highly essential for sustainable production of sugarcane in commercial farm of the region in Bangladesh, where it has been grown year after year.

A field study was conducted to investigate and ascertain the effects of boron and molybdenum with recommended N P K S Zn fertilizers (RFD) for sustained sugarcane yield in the sandy acidic soil in Old Himalayan Piedmont Plain of Bangladesh. Results revealed that the treatment T7 having recommended fertilizers of N 120, P 35, K 100, S 25 and Zn 2kg ha-1 + B 2kg ha-1 + Mo 2 kg ha-1 produced significantly higher number of millable cane (126.96~times103~;ha-1) except in T9 with RFD + B 2 kg ha-1 + Mo 4kg ha-1 , and higher cane yield (92.83 Mg ha-1 ) among all except in T3 with RFD + B2 kg ha-1 , T5 with RFD + Mo 2kg ha-1 and T9 where the effects were statistically identical. The increase in cane yield by T7 was 164.6~% over control. The treatment T7 having RFD + B 2kg ha-1 + Mo 2kg ha-1 further gave the highest additional net economic benefit of Taka 16, 500.00 for added Band Mo at 2kg ha-1 among all the treatments in the study.