The immediate challenge for the proposed interim government will be restoring the economy suffering heavy disruption over the student-led mass protests culminated in the fall of the Sheikh Hasina-led government.
The operation of banks, ports, business establishments and highways should be restored, said former Bangladesh Bank governor Salehuddin Ahmed minutes after the announcement of forming an interim government by army chief Waker-Uz-Zaman on Monday.
The army chief sometime after 4:00pm announced the resignation of Sheikh Hasina as the country鈥檚 prime minister.
Economists also said that financial assistance should be given to the families of those killed in the month-long historic movement.
They, however, said that the main challenges for the interim government would be adopting a roadmap to decide the priority actions for strengthened recovery process of the ailing economy.
The shortage of dollars, high inflation, low revenue income, weakness in the banking sector, unemployment, capital flight and flawed policy by the immediate past government since 2009 had been blamed for the current macro-economic headwinds.
The country has borrowed $4.7 billion from the International Monetary Fund to tackle depletion of the forex reserves hovering around $20 billion from $48 billion in August 2021.
Anu Muhammad, a former economics professor at Jahangirnagar University, said that the institutional setup should be revisited to enable these institutions to carry out their responsibilities.
Besides, investigation should be launched on the deals on power and ports signed by the immediate-past government over the one and a half decades, he added.
A longstanding demand is to scrap the 鈥楽peedy supply of power and energy (special provision) (amendment) act, 2010鈥� by which the loan share of power subsidy from the budget has been given to private power producers under the controversial provision of capacity charge.
Private power generation companies receive payment from the government whether they produce power or not under the capacity charge provision.
In September 2023, state minister for power, energy and mineral resources Nasrul Hamid told parliament that Tk 1,04,000 crore was spent for the capacity charge since 2009.
Policy Research Institute executive director Ahsan H Mansur added that at least two taskforces鈥攐ne on banking sector and other on revenue sector鈥攕hould be appointed.
Tax starvation would not help the interim government, he said.
Besides, economists suggested restructuring the current national budget to streamline the austerity steps and enhance allocations on social safety net, health and education.
The expansion of the social safety net programme was imperative to protect the poor and low income groups from inflation that had been remained 14 years high for the past two financial years, they said.
Former World Bank Dhaka office chief economist Zahid Hussain said that the earnings of the low income group were affected during the student movement and so they should be compensated from the national budget.
He also said that the uninterrupted internet service should be maintained in any future crisis.
Rashed Al Mahmud Titumir, an economics professor at the Department of Development Studies at Dhaka University, however, said that major changes in the political settlement were needed to overcome the economic weaknesses.
To him, the current one-party system should also be blamed for the ruination of the country鈥檚 institutions and creation of oligarchs through capital flight, causing the dollar crisis.
Calling the responsibility of institutions as the most essential component of the state functioning in the modern era, he lamented that no institutions could function properly in the absence of the public society in politics.
