The finance minister, Abul Maal Abdul Muhith, on Sunday said that Muhammad Yunus was not telling the truth when he said that the government was out to grab Grameen Bank with its various activities and Yunus’s saying such things were harmful for the country.
‘He is running unnecessary campaigns that the government wants to take over Grameen Bank. He is not telling the truth,’ Muhith said as he addressed a discussion in the CIRDAP auditorium.
Muhith said that Yunus was running the propaganda as he could not become chairman of the Grameen Bank.
‘The government did not create any pressure on the Grameen Bank and Dr Yunus is just telling lies just because he has not been made chairman of the bank,’ he said.
Muhith said that there was also propaganda that the bank was about to collapse after Yunus had left which was not true. ‘In fact, the bank has now been at its peak in the past 10 years,’ he said. ‘Now I am seriously affected by Padma bridge project and Dr Yunus issue.’
He also said that Yunus was not the only one having contribution to micro-credit financing.
‘He expanded micro credit by up to 12 per cent at most. I have taken it further by 30 per cent and worked in the interest of people and not for any organisation,’ he said.
Muhith further alleged that Yunus had formulated such a rule for the selection committee of the Grameen Bank so that no one other than him could become its chairman.
He said that the government had taken a move to amend the ordinance of the Grameen Bank as there has been no selection committee for a year and a half to appoint its managing director.
The cabinet on August 2 approved a proposal for an amendment to the Grameen Bank Ordinance 1983, giving more power to the government-appointed chairman to choose the bank’s managing director, sidelining other board members.
The position of the managing director fell vacant after Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus was forced to step down as its chief executive by the Bangladesh Bank in 2011.
-With New Age input
