Former caretaker government adviser Hossain Zillur Rahman on Saturday said that containing inflation, reviving economic activities and breaking the oligarchs鈥� dominance on markets remained as major challenges for the interim government.
However, the interim government headed by Muhammad Yunus has made some progress in reforms in banking and financial sectors, he said at the launching of the sixth edition of the Banking Almanac in the capital Dhaka.
He hoped that adequate measures would be taken to overcome the challenges in the forthcoming new year.
Thrust should be given to small and medium entrepreneurs to revive economic activities, he said, adding that actions against oligarch dominating markets were imperative to contain inflation which has been hovering at double-digit for the past two years.
Hossain Zillur chaired the event as the acting chairman of the board of editors of the Banking Almanac that has been published since 2016.
Addressing the event, finance adviser Salehuddin Ahmed said that the publication was a useful one for the investors especially the foreign ones to get information, as data previously were often presented in shady ways.
Part of that was done deliberately and some unintentionally, he said, referring to the flawed calculation on gross domestic product, inflation and investment by the immediate past political regime ousted amid a mass uprising on August 5.
International lenders make queries about the authenticity of the data the interim government is proving to them, he said as he described the unwarranted situation because of the misdeeds done by the previous government.
Mentioning the importance of accurate data for any plans, Salehuddin said that the share market-related data should be available by a publication like the Banking Almanac.
He blamed the weakness of regulators and roles of market players for the volatility on the share market.
He said that he did not like to see investors staging protests against the fall in prices of the 鈥榋鈥� category shares.
He also said that the interim government was trying to complete the establishment of a single window for making necessary information available for businesses.
Finance Division secretary Khairuzzaman Mozumder, Bangladesh Bank deputy governor Nurun Nahar and Bangladesh Association of Banks chairman Abdul Hai Sarker, among others, spoke at the event.
