SPEAKERS at a dialogue on Tuesday have rightly laid emphasis on cautious use of stimulus package money to help affected trade and industry saying failure to ensure its proper utilization will largely leave its achievements unfulfilled. Mainly they have said big defaulters should not benefit from it because it will only add to spilling up of default loans. The bigger part of the fund would come as bank loans and caution must be exercised that big businesses will not grab most of the fund as it happens in most such cases to trigger a bigger crisis in the banking sector.
There is also a genuine fear that SMEs and other affected small businesses may remain in the side line because the bailout is mainly focused on big businesses. One should not forget that SMEs account for bigger part of the productive sector and providing jobs to vast multitude of work force. The coronavirus has severely affected most of them and most of their work force has severely affected — not fully paid or partly shutdown. Their rehabilitation must be addressed under the biggest ever stimulus packages of over Tk 1.03 trillion.
The distribution of the fund should therefore be based as speakers said by formation of multi-stakeholder taskforce to assess the need of particular business for fund and monitor its proper use. There is a big risk of misuse and even misappropriation of the fund showing big losses or producing false financial account as such. Even bankers are also clients themselves in many cases, as Dr Ahsan H Mansur, Executive Director of Policy Research Institute has pointed out calling for cautions in approving and releasing the fund.
Speakers have also rightly voiced skepticism on claim of fund, almost the bigger part of it by members of the RMG sector justifying it for keeping the industry functioning while they are planning retrenching workers. It will defeat the very purpose of the fund and the development must be watched. Most speakers have reasonably suggested that the apparel sector should grow its resilience instead of always depending on the government and banking sector while facing any catastrophe.
The government needs to rethink about the effectiveness of the stimulus packages in achieving the objectives at a time when proper governance, accountability and transparency are missing in our financial management and banks are sanctioning loans ignoring public interest.
