Time News Desk: Prime minister Sheikh Hasina on Tuesday said the parliament that the government now needs $9 billion more than the past years to meet import cost due to global financial crisis caused by Russia-Ukraine war and Covid situation.
‘We are importing food, edible oil, fuel and many other items. Now we need to pay $9 billion more to import those items,’ she said in a general discussion.
Jatiya Party lawmaker Mujibul Haque proposed a general motion to inform the nation about ‘short and long term sustainable measures taken by the government to deal with the problems of Covid-19, global unrest, Ukraine-Russia war, climate change, natural disasters, energy crisis and rising commodity prices through a general discussion in parliament.’
The prime minister said that the government kept taking necessary measures to address the crisis which created burden on many countries following the Russia-Ukraine war and various sanctions on Russia.
The government is taking steps so that the country does not step into the food scarcity, she said.
Hasina said that the export incentives would be widened to increase the export and diversify export items.
She regretted that a section of people was always there who wanted to make their fate through extra profits in bad times.
Several lawmakers blasted the government accusing it of utter failure to arrest price hike of essentials and fuel oils, widespread corruption and money laundering.
Opposition lawmakers said blamed the government’s wrong policies, mismanagement, corruption and inefficiency in every sector for the sorry state of the country.
Treasury bench lawmakers, however, said that the current situation, including price hike, was caused by global crisis following Russia-Ukraine war.
Placing the proposal, Mujibul Haque said the prices of diesel, octane and petrol increased by 41–51 per cent at one go pushing up prices of all goods. Prices of products that have nothing to do with oil and war have increased due to corruption and syndicate of dishonest businesses, he said.
JP lawmaker Kazi Firoz Rashid said that widespread corruption and money laundering, syndicates of corrupt businesses were behind the present situation.
JP party lawmaker Shameem Haider Patwari said the government made many mistakes. Now is the time to admit mistakes to prevent recurrence of the mistakes.
BNP lawmaker Rumeen Farhana said that the government was saying that the country was moving on the highway of development and going to become a developed nation like Singapore.
‘But, suddenly we saw that the country is going to face a situation similar to Sri Lanka,’ she said. It is becoming clear that electricity has been purchased from some companies in the past few years by spending huge amount of money through indemnity. More than Tk 90,000 crore has been handed over to them in capacity charges, she said.
JSD president Hasanul Haque Inu apologised on behalf of himself and the government to the people for their suffering due to price hike of essentials.
He blasted the government for syndicate in the market, chaos in transport sector, mismanagement in dollar market and lack of coordination in the administration.
Al lawmaker Tofail Ahmed said that the reality did not match the words of BNP lawmaker. Inflation is now at its highest level in 25 years in Europe while Bangladesh’s position in South Asia is very strong, he said.
Price of some essentials has increased and some unrest situation is prevailing in the market, said agriculture minister Abdur Razzaque.
At least 20 lawmakers participated in the around five and half an hour long discussion.
The parliament unanimously passed the motion.
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