Speakers at a discussion yesterday urged the government to revive jute sector and not to pay any attention to suggestions of the World Bank (WB) in this regard. “The World Bank is advising the government to shut down jute mills in the country,” Salahuddin Ahmed, a former chairman of the Bangladesh Jute Mills Corporation, told the discussion.

The country needs a national policy to monitor the aid for trade, speakers told a discussion in Dhaka on September 15. The aid for trade development should be focused on capacity building, infrastructure development and product diversification, they added at the discussion titled ‘Aid for Trade and Supply Side Constraints Faced by the SMEs’.

The government is prepared to sell off shares in Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB) by next year, Finance Adviser Mirza Azizul Islam indicated on September 10. However the adviser said the process of corporatising BTTB must be completed before the shares can be sold.

Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI) on September 10 hailed the assurances the chief adviser and the army chief recently made to the businesspeople at a dialogue with them. Terming the assurances timely and convincing, the MCCI in a press statement said the chief adviser’s announcement for formation of Bangladesh Better Business Forum to be chaired by the chief adviser and conducting of a quarterly survey on business confidence in the country will have a lasting favourable impact on the economy.

Inflation has soared to its record high of 10.10 per cent on a point-to-point basis in July since the independence, with economists seeing no quick fix and calling for urgent steps to restore business confidence.

The first ever private sector plant producing cement clinker, a key ingredient in cement, started operation in Jessore yesterday, marking an important step for private investment in the building materials sector.

The chief adviser, Fakhruddin Ahmed, has said the government will lift restrictions on indoor politics from today to create a congenial atmosphere aiming at holding dialogue with the political parties.

The government must not enter into any treaty with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that hampers national interest, no matter whatever amount of money it offers to lend, said the finance adviser.

Inflationary pressure has increased in the last five years as the country had to spend excess money on import of essential commodities due to huge depreciation of local currency.

Business leaders at a dialogue with the interim government on Wednesday said wholesale hunting of the corrupt and the drives against black money-holders and tax dodgers by the Anti-Corruption Commission and the National Board of Revenue had spread panic among the business community.

Business leaders yesterday warned the caretaker government that the ongoing crackdown on corruption has created a ‘climate of fear’ which might push the economy to ruin, while Chief Adviser (CA) Fakhruddin Ahmed tried to allay their fears and boost business confidence by proposing a series of business-friendly reforms.

President of International Chamber of Commerce (ICC)-Bangladesh Mahbubur Rahman urged the government not to sign the International Monetary Fund’s Policy Support Instrument (PSI) as it would be “compromising the country’s sovereignty allowing the international agency to act just as a credit rating agency in relation to Bangladesh”. He made the above observation while delivering his speech at the first ever high-level Dialogue on Bangladesh Economy and Future Perspective held in Dhaka on September 5 at a local hotel. The Chief Adviser of the Care-taker Government of Bangladesh Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed was Chief Guest while Chief of Army Staff General Moeen U Ahmed, ndc, psc was present as Special Guest at the Dialogue. Finance and Commerce Adviser of the care-taker Government Dr. A. B. Mirza Azizul Islam presided over the Dialogue.

The country’s top business leaders have expressed their fear that the government’s current lender-dictated policy towards agriculture ‘is certain’ to plunge the entire sector towards destruction, much like as has happened with the once-flourishing jute sector. ‘We consider the … policy is certain to harm the core of our economy — agriculture — much along the same line as it happened to our “golden fibre” — jute,’ claimed the top executives of 14 trade bodies in a press statement released on Wednesday

Immediate and effective actions are required to keep prices of basic food grains at an affordable level to help the flood-hit poor to survive and restart their livelihood activities, top business leaders observed on August 15. If food prices continue its present upward trend, general people especially the vulnerable group will confront extreme hardship to meet their daily minimum requirement, they said in a press statement.

For helping the poor to survive and re-start their livelihood activities after the devastating flood, immediate and effective actions are needed to keep the prices of basic food grains at an affordable level. If the food prices continue its present increasing trend, ordinary people especially the vulnerable group will confront extreme hardship to meet their daily minimum needs; not to speak of rehabilitating themselves.

Country’s prominent business leaders said Wednesday immediate and effective actions are needed to keep the prices of basic food items at an affordable level to help the poor survive and re-start their livelihood in the aftermath of the current flood. In a joint statement, leaders of 14 chambers and trade associations said if the food prices continue its present increasing trend, ordinary people, especially the vulnerable group, “will confront extreme difficulties to meet their daily minimum needs, not to speak of rehabilitating themselves”.

A former director of the central bank board Sunday warned that the cautious monetary policy being pursued to control inflation might hinder investment growth. Latifur Rahman, also president of the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said that the Bangladesh Bank’s policy, influenced by the suggestion of International Monetary Fund, might have a negative impact on the country’s investment.

Vice-President of International Chamber of Commerce (ICC)-Bangladesh Latifur Rahman urged Sunday the government and the central bank to reduce the bank rate and take appropriate fiscal and other policy measures to encourage higher capacity utilisation and more investment. He said such measures in the long run will help create an industrial base for establishing a smooth supply chain and control the present price spiral that is seriously affecting the low and middle income groups.

The Bangladesh Bank’s move to enforce IMF (International Monetary Fund) prescription for a contractionary monetary policy in order to tame inflation might have a negative impact on investment, cautioned Latifur Rahman, vice president of the International Chamber of Commerce-Bangladesh (ICC-B), inaugurating a workshop in Dhaka yesterday.

President of ICC Bangladesh Mahbubur Rahman said robust expansion of international trade would not be materialised without the existence and proper use of such rules. Without an uniform set of rules to guide banks from different countries, contracting parties will not be able to easily traverse the maze of different national documentary credit regulations and as a result costs of business will go up as well as international trade will suffer, he said.