With the fall of the Awami League regime, the interim government faces the challenges left behind by the fascist government.
Issues such as better logistics, banking services and security in industries also needed to be addressed to ensure recovery of the country’s economic activities.
Besides, we needed to overcome the rise in inflation, slowdown in external demand, weak remittance inflow, shortfall in revenue collection and slow public expenditure, depreciation of the Taka and a decline in foreign exchange reserves to ensure economic rebound.
To overcome the challenges, the interim government took some decisive measures to address the economic fallout.
But they also need to take more actions to stabilize forex reserves, manage inflation, enhance revenue earnings, ensure proper electricity and gas supply for economic activities, and protect small businesses.
According to newspaper reports on Wednesday, the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the leading trade body in Bangladesh, observed that Bangladesh’s low labour costs are generally believed to be attractive to foreign investors, yet they hesitate to make fresh investments in the country because of the country’s underdeveloped infrastructure, and such other impediments as the shortage of energy and weak transmission infrastructure, lack of consistency in policy and regulatory frameworks, scarcity of industrial land, corruption, and non-transparent and uneven application of rules and regulations.
The MCCI also attributed the low level of private investment because of these reasons.
Thus, the government needs to address these impediments to attract more FDI to the country in order to ensure the country’s economic development, they observed.
It is to be noted that influential business tycoons who had been close to the deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina, have swindled $17 billion off the banking sector, during the 15 years of her authoritarian regime. This is said to be the biggest robbing of banks by any international standards.
The interim government should, therefore, recover the stolen money that has left dozens of banks mostly bankrupt and the economy dry. It should also hold to justice people in nexus, still at large on both private and the public side, to stop the recurrence of such scams to restore business confidence among the local and foreign investors.