Dhaka, Feb 11 (bdnews24.com) — The BNP has asked the government about the income sources of the Malaysian companies who are to fund the construction of the Padma bridge.
“People must be informed about the income source of those construction firms that are going to finance the project. We want to whether the money looted from the country’s share market is coming back to Bangladesh through these foreign companies,” party acting secretary-general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said on Saturday.
The biggest infrastructural project to build Bangladesh’s longest bridge ran into troubled waters after global lending agency, The World Bank, blocked funds in October last year claiming that there were corruptions in the project. The World Bank was supposed to lend $1.2 billion to the $2.9-billion project.
After Malaysian government on Jan 31 officially expressed its intent to invest in the construction of the bridge, the government also showed its interest. The government is set to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Malaysia by Feb 21.
“We want to know about the interest rate of the loans,” Mirza Fakhrul said at a protest rally on the ongoing slump in the stock market in front of the party’s Naya Paltan headquarters.
Following the prime minister’s directive, the Security and Exchange Commission had declared some incentive packages as the market was fluctuating. Still, the general index of Dhaka Stock Exchange plummeted around 4,000 points.
Mirza Fakhrul blamed the government for the continuous slump in share market. “The government has destroyed the share market in a planned way…The goal is to leave the country’s economy in tatters.”
He held the government responsible for the suicides of two investors in Dhaka and Chittagong, he said, “The prime minister must take responsibilities for the suicides.”
BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia’s advisor and former commerce minister Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury said, “The loot [in the share market] has taken place with the assistance of the government and its people. Only two of the 3.3 million investors have committed suicide and the rest are like living dead.”
He said the BNP will hold trials of the criminals behind the ‘stock market downturn’ if it comes to power.
