Bangladesh suspends backroom natural resource deals, vows ‘transparency’: US report

In a major development for governance and economic accountability, the United States government’s 2025 Fiscal Transparency Report has spotlighted Bangladesh’s new direction: all future natural resource extraction contracts will be awarded through fully open and transparent procurement processes, a decisive break from the past. The report, released Friday, acknowledges that while Bangladesh’s fiscal systems still face structural gaps, the country’s non-political interim government has taken “significant reform steps” with the most impactful being its overhaul of how the nation’s oil, gas, minerals, and other natural wealth are licensed and contracted. According to the US report, the Interim Government has suspended all direct negotiations for natural resource extraction previously initiated by the former administration, many of which lacked public scrutiny or...