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Bangladesh:Raw jute exporters assured interest waiver |
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2004-12-30
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Defaulting raw jute exporters have been assured interest waiver provided they repay principal amount of Tk 32 crore. The amount with interest has been accumulating for the past 29 years.
Earlier a delegation of Bangladesh Jute Association (BJA) representing about 250 exporters met the finance minister at his secretariat office and appraised him of the pathetic situation they were facing.
Governments'' failure to implement Shahadat Ullah committee recommendation in 1979-80, ban on raw jute export in 1984-85, failure to initiate buffer stock scheme in 1985-86 and subsequent natural disasters in 1987-88 and 1988-99 are the reasons for non-repayments of loans, BJA leaders said.
Finance and Planning Minister M Saifur Rahman castigated the exporters for pursuing the default practice. "You people have been doing business for over 20 years but why don''t you repay bank loans? It''s not the money of government or the bank. It''s the money of the depositors. It needs to be repaid in time," the minister said. About 250 raw jute exporters borrowed money from six public banks in 1977. Most of them repaid money to the banks in 1995 when the government waived 50 percent interest of the loans.
However, about 80 exporters defaulted blaming natural disasters and ''faulty policies'' of the government even as the total loan mounted to Tk 42 crore.
"If government waives the interest amount of Tk 10.5 crore, the exporters, now out of business, can be able to repay the loans," said Mahfuzul Haque, chairman of BJA. He also demanded 10 percent cash incentives as the sector fetches huge amount of foreign exchange.
Saifur said he may look into the loans drawn from four nationalised commercial banks (NCBs) but two former NCBs -- Pubali Bank and Uttara Bank -- will take their own decisions on the BJA''s demand of interest waiver.
About the cash incentive, the minister said the ministry will examine the demand and make a decision later. He, however, instantly asked Finance Secretary Zakir Ahmed Khan at the meeting to take the interest waiver issue to the four NCBs.
Meanwhile, BJA leaders apprised the meeting that raw jute export amounted to Tk 364 crore in 1999-2000, Tk 517 crore in 2002-2003 and Tk 454 crore in 2003-2004. |
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