Finance adviser Salehuddin Ahmed on Thursday played down the International Monetary Fund鈥檚 observation that the Bangladesh economic outlook is gloomy.
鈥業 will say the outlook is not gloomy, but is facing challenges,鈥� he said while talking to reporters at his office at the Secretariat in the capital Dhaka.
His comment came a day after IMF mission chief Chris Papageorgiou said Bangladesh鈥檚 outlook remained highly uncertain, with risks skewed to the downside.
The IMF announced that the country鈥檚 gross domestic product growth decreased to 3.8 per cent for the current 2024-25 financial year from 4.5 per cent due to output losses caused by the mass c uprising, floods and tighter policies.
Without mentioning the rate, the finance adviser admitted that the GDP growth would slow down.
He also admitted that they had agreed to take extra $750 million on the current $4.7 billion loan programme from the IMF to bolster reform in the banking and revenue sectors.
On Wednesday, Chris Papageorgiou in a post mission briefing said that about $645 million would be made available for the third tranche under the current loan programme taken by the Awami League government before it was ousted on August 5 amid a mass uprising.
The IMF has already disbursed about $2.3 billion in two tranches, including $1.1 billion as the second tranche in June 2024, for maintaining the balance of payment that has been facing stresses since April 2022.
The finance adviser said they would start the process of separating the administration of the National Board of Revenue from its policy department.
Responding to a query on the proposed dearness allowance for the government employees, he said that the extension of the facility was linked to the local currency.
The required fund in this regard will not be that high, he said.
In 2015, the government introduced the current pay scale for government employees, almost doubling their salaries.
The employees also receive a 5-per cent increment on their basic salary every year.
The recently released 鈥榃hite Paper on the state of Bangladesh economy鈥� mentioned that the pay hike in 2015 was intended to appease the bureaucracy that aided the government in rigging the 2014 election.
Given the low tax-GDP ratio and due to heavy public debts, interest payment on loans has surged since 2017鈥�18 and it surpassed even the amount of salaries and allowances of the government, added the paper in its 鈥楥hapter VII on Public Investment: The Roots of Corruption.鈥�
The finance adviser observed that the white paper was based on derived knowledge.聽 鈥楴othing new,鈥� he said.
Power, energy and mineral resources adviser Muhammad Fouzul Kabir Khan, who was then present at the finance adviser鈥檚 office, said that they would not increase the prices of power despite the IMF recommendations.
He said that they would reduce the production and distribution costs of power to head off the power price hike issues.
