Financial advisor Dr. Salehuddin Ahmed said the government is not worried about the state of GDP growth as it is concrete in nature.

“The government is not worried about growth because the country’s growth is concrete, especially in agriculture…” he said.

The financial adviser, in an interview, spoke to the national news agency at his office at the Bangladesh Secretariat, marking the end of three months and subsequently 100 days by the caretaker government.

He said that even if the real growth in such sectors reaches 4%, then it is better considering the situation in Hong Kong and Singapore.

Asked if he was satisfied with the current state of the economy, the councilor said growth was definitely needed, but the quality and nature of it was also important.

According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), the country’s GDP growth at constant prices in Q4FY24 was 3.91%, which was 5.42% in Q3, 4 .78% in Q2 and 6.04% in Q2. first quarter.

Dr. Salehuddin said the government is trying to reduce the trend of corruption and fully restore the confidence of businessmen.

“We want to make sure that a few sections of people can’t manipulate everything like in the past.”

For the economy and the private sector to flourish, he believed that a participatory situation, a level playing field, transparency and long-term accountability were necessary.

On the caretaker government’s strong message against the corrupt, the financial adviser said steps are being taken, adding that the government does not want to take coercive measures.

The Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU), he said, has seized the personal accounts of the alleged corrupt but none’s business accounts have been seized so far even for big importers and businessmen.

“We are also trying to bring reforms in the revenue sector to further broaden the tax system and also not to put additional pressure on taxpayers. In the long term, we want to reduce poverty, ensure the quality of education and life, and social safety nets, and we are making progress in this direction.”

The financial adviser said it took three months for preparations and mobilization of the caretaker government, but the message is there.

“Thanks to our steps, people will now think before committing corruption like buying flats and houses (by amassing illegal wealth)… people will try to become more responsible,” he added.

Asked about the overall performance of the macro economy in the last three months and beyond, the financial adviser said that before the caretaker government took over, there was a stalemate in the economy due to various reasons and inefficiencies of the Awami League government.

“It was a bit out of control in the economy,” he added.

Firstly, Salehuddin said that the banking sector is in a serious state, there are problems in the governance of a large number of banks, a huge amount of money has been flown abroad from the banking system, non-performing loans (NPLs) were in growth. day by day the capital market was in bad shape with debacles happening one after another.

In addition, he said that there were some irregularities in the revenue sector, especially in the tax field, and especially that the caretaker government inherited high inflation due to various reasons such as money printing, supply chain breakdown which reduced the standard of living of to ordinary people. .

Even, he said, foreign reserves have come down to almost $18 to $19 billion from $42 billion and all this happened because of the wrong policies of the previous regime in an attempt to fix all things ” artificial”.

The financial adviser said this also impacted the exchange rate as imports became very difficult for the country while export performance was more or less good as well as there was a slow pace of domestic remittances .

“The biggest problem has been in our energy sector as frequent energy imports have put pressure on our foreign exchange reserves which are still around, the country has been dependent on fossil fuels for a long time. I have no fuel,” he added.

Alternatively, he said the country cannot opt ​​for renewable or green energy to a large extent, while the price of energy has been increased by almost 30% by the previous government, for which the pressure is on all sectors.

“We have to pay the price for energy like LNG… on the whole, the agricultural sector is more or less stable because of the contributions of the common farmers. We have inherited all of them…” he said.

Noting that the country’s image was affected enormously because the country could not pay its import bills, he said the exchange rate depreciated day by day while businessmen became insolvent during that time.

The adviser said the most important thing is that FDI is not coming in at all, while foreign portfolio investment (FPI) has also been low, side by side, and foreign assistance has declined, adding to the overall shortfall of resources, resource scarcity, and FDI attraction has gradually decreased.

Overall, he said instability loomed large in the AL regime, while the common people were lazy.