Finance Adviser Dr Salehuddin Ahmed -File Photo

DHAKA, Oct 7, 2025 (BSS) - Finance Adviser Dr Salehuddin Ahmed today said that he was ‘reasonably comfortable’ with the current state of the country’s economy.

 “I’m comfortable from the economic side. We’re more or less, a bit confident,” he told reporters after chairing a meeting of the Advisers Council Committee on Government Purchase at the Bangladesh Secretariat today.

The adviser, however, criticised the way poverty is being measured in recent surveys.

Quoting Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, the adviser said, “He once remarked that you don’t always need complex tools to measure extreme poverty — you can often recognise it by simply observing the people’s faces and conditions.”

Answering to a question about inflation, he said Bangladesh has reduced the rate from 11–14% to around 8%. “If we could bring it down to 4%, we would be truly delighted,” he added. 

Asked whether a new pay scale is on the cards for government employees, he said, “I’ll look into it … perhaps before I leave for the United States.”