Finance adviser Salehuddin Ahmed on Tuesday said that they had no plan to close down troubled banks despite they were limping.
Domino effects from closing down a bank is extreme, he said in a briefing at secretariat, a day after leading agency 惭辞辞诲测鈥檚 cut the country鈥檚 overall credit rating citing growing vulnerabilities in the banking sector, heightened political risks and lower growth.
Blaming mismanagement and corruption during the immediate past Awami League regime for apathy in banking sector, the finance adviser said that the interim government had inherited tough challenges on financial sector.
Bangladesh Bank that was busied in releasing printing money itself needs reforms, he said, highlighting the underlining reason for the double current double digit inflation hurting majority of the consumers including him.
He also said that businesses linked to the previous regime and received undue favours were in fear.
Comparing loan reschedule at 2 per cent down payment facility in AL regime with incidents of 14th century Tughlaq dynasty in this part of the world, the finance adviser said that honest businesses should not have worries with confidence.
To overcome problems of the limping banks, the finance adviser suggested that the individual banks should recover bad loans by even selling assets of the errant borrowers.
Answering on the government efforts to recover the bad loans, he said that they were mulling to increase the working hours of benches dealing with loan recovery cases in the High Court.
Discussions in this regard have already begun with Bangladesh Bank and the Attorney General office, he said.
The finance adviser who was flanked by secretaries of finance division, internal resources division, external resources division and financial institutions division also described challenges on insurance, stock and fiscal management fronts.
He said that they had already checked the falling forex reserves and cleared arrears to foreign traders.
Citing the proverb-- dawn shows the day鈥攈e called to justify the economic performance since the interim government assumed power on August 8.
The finance adviser said that responses from multilateral lenders to provide loans were encouraging, but he warned that poor revenue mobilisation was not encouraging.
He asked for speeding up the revenue generation while highlighting the need for automation process of tax collection part of reform in the National Board of Revenue.
The finance adviser said that they were going to separate policy department of the NBR from its executive branch to put an end to discretionary power of taxmen.聽聽聽
He wondered that such a decision was approved in 2008 but its implementation still remained pending.