The government on Monday approved in principle the draft of a law that prohibits political parties, Supreme Court judges, MPs, elected local body representatives, and government and semi-government employees from receiving foreign funds.
The approval for ‘Foreign Contributions (Voluntary Activities) Regulation Bill, 2014’ was given at a regular meeting of the cabinet held at the Bangladesh Secretariat, chaired by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
The law aims at ensuring transparency in the use of foreign donations in the country.
No NGO will be able to undertake any project and implement it with foreign donations
without the approval of the NGO Affairs Bureau. Besides, the NGOs have to mention the sources of the foreign donations and their areas of utilisation.
The meeting also approved the draft of the ‘National Insurance Policy, 2014’ in a bid to ensure further development of the country’s insurance sector through mitigating the risk of lives and property.
Cabinet Secretary M Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan, while briefing reporters after the meeting, said the approval was given to ensure the proper inspection, monitoring and evaluation of the activities of the foreign-aided NGOs in the country.
The proposed law will also ensure transparency, accountability and appropriate use of foreign contributions through the NGOs, he added.
Mosharraf said the NGOs are working for the development of the country and the proposed law will play a vital role in building partnership between the government and the non-government organisations for sustainable development.
He said as per the proposed law, no NGO will be able to perform its activity without taking registration from the NGO Affairs Bureau while in case of any individual, there is no need to be registered, but he/she has to take approval from the Bureau.
Currently, there are some 2303 NGOs, including 270 foreign ones, working across the country and so far some Tk 50,000 crore has been released through these NGOs since 1990.
The proposed law also kept provisions of punishments, including cancellation of registration and imposing fines for violating the law.
The tenure for the registration will be for 10 years, but in case of any violation of the law, the registration of the NGO concerned could be scrapped. The first step will be issuing warning, then scrapping the registration and then finally imposing fine.
In case of criminal nature offence like financing or patronizing terrorism and militant acts, women and child trafficking and drug smuggling, criminal procedures will be taken against the concerned NGOs.
About the National Insurance Policy, the Cabinet Secretary said the it will act as a guideline for the country’s insurance sector aiming to make commercially viable state-run insurance companies, further strengthening the Insurance Development Regulatory Authority (IDRA), improving the standard of services of the insurance companies through ICT use, ensuring human resource development, introducing group insurance in different organisations, creating insurance awareness, launching board of ethics, best practice award, Islamic insurance, pension scheme at the private sector as well as introducing National Insurance Day.
There will be three portions of the policy – perspective highlighting challenges and problems surrounding the sector, policy statement and formulating an Action Plan.
Although the insurance sector plays a big role in risk mitigation in global context, the sector is yet to flourish in the country, he added. Besides, the meeting also approved the proposal for signing an agreement for Promotion and Reciprocal Protection of Investment with Cambodia as the Prime Minister of Cambodia will visit Bangladesh on June 16-18 this year.
It is to be noted that Bangladesh had so far signed such agreements with 30 countries to boost bilateral trade and investment.
The Cabinet meeting was apprised of the visit of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to Japan on May 25-28, the participation of Industries Minister on the placement of evaluation report on Bangladesh’s investment policy at the Unctad headquarters in Switzerland (April 29) and the visit of Civil Aviation and Tourism Minister to UK (February 28-March 8).
It was also apprised of the participation of high-level Bangladesh delegation in the World Bank Group and IMF Spring Meeting in Washington DC (April 11-13) and in the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation held in Mexico City (April 15-16).
