Amar Bangladesh Party, AB Party, held a media briefing on Wednesday afternoon at its central office raising concern about country’s free fall economy due to government’s widespread and systematic mismanagement for last 15 years.
The leaders of AB Party said loot and plunder became the new normal. 38 out of 54 high street banks had fallen into red zone. Forced mergers is an attempt to write off the default loan and capture relatively better performing banks. Total default is around $45 billion whereas the similar amount of money earned from export between 2013 and 2022 which never came into the country. Bangladesh Bank even gone extraordinarily further to shut down sharing informations with the journalists so that no real facts come out to embarrass this authoritarian regime.
Asaduzzaman Fuaad, a barrister-at-law and Joint Member Secretary of the AB Party, conducted the briefing which was presided over by BM Nazmul Hoque, a Joint Convenor.
The briefing continued to highlight three major crisis that our economy has been undergoing: unprecedented and uncontrolled but persistent inflation; high debt burden- close to USD 270 billion, internal and external combined; and sluggish economic growth.
Fuaad said research from Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, BBS, and Centre for Policy Dialogue, CPD, repeatedly confirmed the rising living cost for individuals and family making daily lives of struggling working class even more unbearable.
He said internal loans have been sucked out by the government to meet their budgetary needs and so called development work rendering zero to nominal private sector investment. As a result, graduate level unemployment is on the persistent rise.
Foreign Direct Investment, FDI, is dying down due to unfavourable environment. Outstanding debt payment currently stands at $5bn which the regime is unable to pay. Reserve came below $14 billion net; on the other hand, government is seeking 5 billion USD from China for debt repairing, he added.
Fuaad said recently visited IMF mission made number of recommendations including downsizing budget, revising interest rates, addressing dollar crisis, reducing subsidy in electricity, minimum net reserve and many more which the regime had failed to follow previously. Yet, third instalment is expected to be transferred soon!
The speakers of AB Party said all the nation’s economic picture is all time bleak since our independence. Financial mismanagement has been systematic and widespread. Our institutions have been made broken and dysfunctional. Regime-loyal oligarchs and kleptocrats have captured our financial industry, banking sector and capital market in particular.
The briefing does not address this regime but the people who need to wake up and resist this unelected regime in their own long term interest.
MSH
