Restoring the banking sector after widespread “financial looting and structural damage” will require Tk 60,000 crore a year from the national budget for five to eight years, Bangladesh Bank Governor Md Mostakur Rahman has said.
He was speaking as chief guest on Saturday at an event promoting Bangla QR transactions, organised by ONE Bank PLC at United International University (UIU) in Dhaka.
Describing the scale of money laundering and irregularities in the financial sector, the governor said that when he took office a third of the banking system’s total funds had already been looted.
On the vast sums that left the financial sector, he said the government could have supported 20 million families with that money or built two major infrastructure projects like the Padma Bridge.
Sharply criticising those responsible for the liquidity crisis in the banking system, he said: “Ordinary words are not enough to convey the gravity of this crime.”
“A group of looters plundered the people’s money. This is not ordinary theft; it was plunder,” Mostakur Rahman said.
The governor gave an assurance that tough legal steps were already being taken to hold to account those involved in the widespread financial irregularities and money laundering and to recover the looted assets.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report