Planning adviser Wahiduddin Mahmud on Monday said that the interim government had no time to give attention to plans and strategic papers of the just ousted political regime.
鈥榃e are busy fixing our own priorities to get the economy moving forward,鈥� said the noted economist in a text massage while answering whether the current five-year plan would remain in force.
Adopted by the Awami League led regime in 2020, the current five-year plan will expire in next June.
The planning adviser also said they were busy identifying the damage to the economy done by the previous regime.
Former planning minster MA Mannan said that it was the responsibility of the interim government to fix the priorities of their own.
鈥楾hey (the interim government) are the present while we are past,鈥� said Mannan who ran the planning ministry between 2019 and 2023.
The mass uprising led by students toppled the previous regime and paved the way for the interim government headed by Nobel laureate professor Muhammad Yunus assuming into power.
Already a committee has been appointed to prepare a whitepaper as part of streamlining the country鈥檚 economy already hamstrung because of corruption, misappropriation of bank funds, capital flights and the market syndicate indulged by the immediate past political regime for the past one and a half decades.
Center for Policy Dialogue distinguished fellow Debapriya Bhattacharya is leading the white paper committee with administrative back-up from the ministry of planning.
Besides, the interim government has already announced appointing a commission for bringing about reforms in the banking sector to fulfill the long standing demand by the economists against the backdrop of rampant loan thefts, shady loans and hostile takeover of banks.
Repeated easy rescheduling scopes for errant borrowers pushed up the overall bad loans Tk聽1,82,295 crore at the end of March 2024, compared to Tk聽1,45,633 crore recorded at the end of December 2023.
The new planning adviser who also looks after the education ministry has already announced a number of plans, including cancelling unnecessary and politically motivated projects from the annual development programme.
The Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation Division has been asked to find out reasons behind repeated revisions of high-cost projects.
Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics has been asked to find out intentional and unintentional errors in preparing national data over the past several years amid allegation of distorting data.