Finance minister AHM Mustafa Kamal. File photo
Finance minister AHM Mustafa Kamal on Sunday said the capital market of the country is not under government control while its banking sector is now in a fragile condition.
“The capital market is not under government control, but I won’t say it’s fully beyond government control,” he said while responding to a supplementary question from ruling party MP Ahsanul Huq Tito.
The minister said the strength of the economy of a country is reflected on the capital market first. In the whole world, the capital market and economy are related this way, the finance minister said.
“We’ve identified the problems in the capital market, we’ll resolve those one after another,” he said adding that he has already held meetings with the stakeholders of the market and will have more in the coming days.
“We’ll try to run the market as it is run in other countries. The loopholes of the market will surely be removed,” Kamal said.
He assured that the government will do whatever is needed to run the capital market strongly.
Responding to another ruling party MP Israfil Alam, the minister said the country’s banking sector is now in a delicate position. “Our banking sector is now in a delicate position. There’s no problem to accept that.”
Kamal mentioned that such a situation may be there in every country as it is not possible all the time in a developing country to run all the sectors in a balanced way.
“In this situation, I won’t say our banking sector is doing bad,” he said.
Kamal mentioned that Bangladesh is now in the first five countries as per GDP growth. “Only two countries — China and India — are at the same level. This achievement can’t be attained without banking sector.”
He said the interest rate on bank loan in the country is comparatively higher than other countries. “In the whole world, no country has the 14-15 per cent interest rate.”
“We’ll formulate a rate integrating system with the other countries of the world. If we can implement that interest rate, it’ll be a turning point for the history of the economic sector of Bangladesh,” he said.
The finance minister mentioned that if the interest rate cannot be brought down to single a digit one there will be repeated write-off loans increasing non-performing loans.
“The weak areas will be weaker, we don’t want that repetition. We’ve started our work. Now it’s time to implement it. We’ll reduce the interest rate,” he told the House.
Source: Prothom Alo.