Al Amin :
A six-month long combined plan headed by Finance Ministry in cooperation with the Prime Minister’s office is needed to face the ongoing economic crisis, economists and experts said.
They said the decisions taken by the government are temporary and unplanned, resulted, in some cases, are back firing.
“The initiatives taken to reduce expenditure including import expense need to be implemented strictly, decision of load shedding should be reconsidered and discipline in financial sector is urgently needed at the moment to overcome the economic crisis,” Dr Zahid Hussain, former lead economist of the World Bank Dhaka office, told The New Nation on Monday.
The Bangladesh Bank should continue the floating exchange rate of the taka, he said.
On the other hand, Dr Mahfuz Kabir, Research Director of Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BIISS), said a six-month long combined plan headed by Finance Ministry in cooperation with the Prime Minister’s office is needed to face the ongoing economic crisis.
Besides, the government should encourage domestic manufacturing, service and agriculture sectors to reduce dependency on imports, he said.
Dr Kabir further said, “Export-oriented sectors including readymade garment must be kept out of gas and electricity shortage and loans repayment conditions may relax for the domestic manufacturing sectors to shore up dollar crisis.” This will also help to keep the country’s backward linkage industry and domestic economy vibrant as well as create employment opportunity, he added.
Production of renewable energy should be geared up immediately to reduce power shortage, he said.
Bangladesh is now facing an economic crisis that will not be over soon as the global economy is also going through turmoil, economists said.
Following this, the economists urged the government to take more measures as the current ones taken to address the situation are inadequate.
The economists also think the country should explore more gas to reduce over-reliance on imports to meet its energy demand and avoid quick rental power plants in order to tackle further troubles in the foreseeable future.
To tackle inflation, they recommended the central bank should increase the interest rate on loans to control the money supply to the market and also suggested the government follow the ongoing austerity measures.
The government should borrow from the Islamic Development Bank, International Monetary Fund and World Bank and foreign nations to check the declining trend of the ongoing foreign reserves, they said.
Last week, the country’s foreign exchange reserves stood at $39.67 billion, down from $46.15 billion in December last year.
Speaking at a discussion on Sunday, Prof Dr Mustafizur Rahman, a distinguished fellow at the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), said the commoners could have avoided the inflationary pressure to some extent had the central bank depreciated the taka against the dollar gradually in the last five-six years.
The exchange rate of the taka stood at Tk 94.70 per dollar on the inter-bank platform on Monday.
