Shawdesh desk:

Prime minister Sheikh Hasina on Saturday categorically said that Awami League had never wasted the country’s money, rather it uses every taka in people’s interest, for their wellbeing, and considering their brighter future.

She said this while inaugurating the construction work of Dhaka-Ashulia Elevated Expressway — aimed to facilitate fast entry and exit of vehicles to and from the capital.

She joined the programme virtually from her official residence Ganabhaban in Dhaka.

Sheikh Hasina said that no one had gone away, taking money from country’s forex reserve.

‘This fear is always in their (BNP’s) mind. BNP will say this. The reason behind this is that their leader Tarique Zia has been convicted for seven years and fined Tk 20 crore in money laundering case. He is now an absconding criminal,’ she said.

She also said that the BNP was habituated with money laundering and they always thought it was normal to take away money from the country.

The prime minister said that the government was investing from the country’s forex reserve, as if it takes loans from other countries’ banks, it has to repay that dollar with interest.

‘If we use our own dollars through Sonali Bank, that money remains in our country. Keeping that in our mind we have given USD 8 billion,’ she said.

She mentioned that Bangladesh has given some dollars to Sri Lanks as loan while they were in deep economic crisis.

The prime minister said that BNP often questioned about the money in the forex reserve.

‘They are trying to spread propaganda across the country regarding the reduced reserve amount,’ she said.

In this regard, she said that when BNP was in power, the forex reserve was only USD 2.9 billion, and during 2001-2008, it was increased to USD 5 billion only.

‘From that position we were able to raise that up to about USD 48 billion. It was increased during coronavirus pandemic when communication, transport, import and everything was almost stopped,’ she said.

But, she mentioned, when the world started opening up, import increased, especially the inflation and recession due to the coronavirus and Ukraine-Russia war created a blow over the economy worldwide and Bangladesh is also affected due to that.

‘We are paying our import expenditure from reserve money, besides we have given vaccines free of cost and arranged coronavirus tests free of cost. Developed countries across the globe did not do this vaccination and testing free of cost. We have procured vaccines by giving cash. After that, we got vaccines as grants,’ she said.

Sheikh Hasina said that food prices, transportation cost, fuel price, edible oil, wheat price, lentil price and corn price also had increased around the world.

‘We are importing those. We are producing rice and other food items, apart of those we have to import some other items. We had to import some items while we were affected in flood and cyclone,’ she said.

The prime minister said that what the government was spending was just for the people of the country and their welfare.

‘For procuring food for them, procuring medicines for cancer, fertiliser, fuel and electricity. We are procuring those with cash money.’

She also said that Bangladesh had procured aircraft and doing river dredging with reverse money.

Regarding the apprehension of scarcity of food in the coming days, she again requested all to utilise every inch of land for food production to avert any kind of food related crisis.

‘Briefly describing various positive impacts of the Dhaka-Ashulia Elevated Expressway, the prime minister asked the concerned authorities to complete the project quickly.

Road Transport and bridges minister Obaidul Quader, Chinese ambassador Li Jiming and Bridges Division secretary Md Monjur Hossain also spoke at the programme.

A video documentary on the Dhaka-Ashulia Elevated Expressway was screened.