Almost every day news is coming out about the banking sector. How long can people be fooled into thinking that there is no crisis in the region? I don’t know of a single case anywhere in the world where a single business conglomerate controls more than half a dozen banks.
According to the central bank’s audit report, this business group has taken Taka 300 billion from private Islamic banks under different names (S Alam Group alone took Taka 30,000 crore loan from IBBL, The New Age, 30 November 2022). The New Age report said that if the rules and regulations were followed, the group could have received a loan of 2.15 billion taka. This means that he has used his invisible power and influence to get at least 139 times more credit than he deserves.
S Alam Group had taken over the bank in 2017 through much drama. It is not difficult to understand that under the influence of that invisible force, the group’s bad loans of 60 billion taka with the bank’s Khatunganj branch exposed in Bangladesh Bank’s investigation were regularized in the bank’s annual report.
Of course, spreading misleading news to thwart the opponent is not a new thing in the politics of our country. But when it crosses all limits, the result is never good, as many examples show. The problem is that in politics, fanfare to create confusion may give temporary benefits, but it does not apply when it comes to the economy.
It has already been proved how hollow the claims of self-sufficiency in food production were. The queues of helpless poverty-stricken people get longer and longer in front of trucks selling rice, pulses and oil at throwaway prices. Now the middle class has no choice but to queue them up. I heard confusion break out in a song the other day. A girl rapper was singing:
“The pavements are lined with tiles, shiny, shiny,
This is the bed for street children to spend the night in.” (roughly translated)
* Kamal Ahmed is a senior journalist