Alleges Muhith
Finance minister AMA Muhith on Wednesday said the Bangladesh Bank misrepresented the fact about its autonomous status to the International Monetary Fund.
He told this to reporters after a meeting with a visiting IMF mission at his secretariat office. He said he had no idea why the BB officials lied to the IMF. ‘I have to talk to the BB officials’ he said.
The finance minister said the BB had already been enjoying enough autonomy except the powers to dismiss board of directors of the state owned commercial banks.
He noted that there was no pressure on the BB to exercise its existing power in monitoring and taking action against the commercial banks and other financial entities.
Muhith observed that the central bank wanted to enjoy more power than that of the government.
Officials said the IMF raised question about the BB’s monitoring role over the state-owned banks because of a series of scandals and burglary cases during the meeting with the finance minister.
Little known Hallmark Group swindled more than Tk 3,600 crore from state-owned Sonali Bank Limited in 2012. The biggest commercial bank of the county faced burglaries twice in less than last two months.
Muhith said the IMF had also raised concern about the mobilisation of revenue after decrease of tax on readymade garment income.
He, however, said the government was maintaining a good relation with the IMF.
There was a row between the government and the IMF over a proposal by the latter that aimed at restricting the country’s capacity of borrowing concessional loans.
Muhith said they had opposed such idea.
He said the current IMF mission had no relation with the proposed new policy called ‘Debt Limits in Fund Programmes with Low Income Countries’.
-With New Age input
