‘Govt makes economy a patronised one’

Al Amin :
The country’s economy has turned into a patronized one in order to facilitate some persons and people are paying price for the controlled and the manipulated market system.
BNP Standing Committee Member Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury came up with the remarks while talking to The New Nation.
Bangladesh is now dependent on expensive imported fuel in the power sector. Opposition parties and economists have raised their voice several times about the massive excess in idle capacity in power generation.
Ignoring it, the government is planning to expand this capacity to 40,000MW while demand is stagnating at around 13,000 MW during peak hours. Most of the contracts were awarded
bypassing competitive bidding process. When asked about the mentioned policy, the BNP policymaker said, “The incumbent government has given permission to set up power plants at home and abroad higher than the country’s demand. Some ruling party men have become beneficiary of the policy.”
“They did this for their own political interest and plundering money from the sector and the people are paying price heavily for this. The sectors like export-oriented, should have been given priority, is now ignored,” he added.
As a result, production procedure has barred as well as cost has been increased significantly in the country due to the power crisis, he said.
He further said, “They (government) have allowed the party men establishing power plants without setting up transmission and the balance between demand and supply was not taken into the consideration.”
 “They (government) have made the country power import-dependency one. It is putting pressure on reserve as most of the payment is made by dollar,” he added.
“We must come out from this. We have to emphasize on renewable energy. We have to utilize our own capacity to release pressure on macro economy,” he added.
About the contracts that have tenures in the range of 15 to 22 years, Khasru said, “Such contracts should have been short term tenure. But, they have prolonged these only for looting money from the sector.”
“Prolonging the agreements with the contractors, they turn the system a patronize economy,” he added.
When asked about Chinese loans as the country has been a major development partner of Bangladesh since recognizing us an independent nation on August 31, 1975, the BNP policymaker said, “If any government, either it is legal or illegal, engaged any agreement with any country, it should continue.”
“It should think about the people’s interest and welfare of the country to take any foreign loans. But, the present government has done it without considering effect of it,” he said.
“It will be given priority on people’s interest to take any loans in future,” he said.