Shawdesh Desk:

Prime minister and Awami League president Sheikh Hasina on Friday said that taming inflation was a big challenge for the government.

‘The big challenge for us is that how we will control the inflation. We have to contain it,’ she said while giving an introductory speech in a meeting of the AL advisory council at her official Ganabhaban residence in Dhaka in the evening.

The prime minister said that the inflation was 12.3 per cent when her party assumed power in 2009 and the reserve was less than one billion US dollars.

She continued that they had been able to take the country’s economy to a big position after facing the challenge.

At that time in 2009, the size of the budget was only Tk 68,000 crore and now the AL government had placed the budget of Tk 7.97 lakh crore, she said.

‘We have to implement the budget,’ she added.

The prime minister said that the world economy had now been facing economic recession and high inflation due to Russia-Ukraine war, sanctions and counter sanctions, genocide in Gaza and the Covid pandemic.

‘Bangladesh also could not be saved from its (impacts),’ she said.

Despite the facts, the prime minister said that Bangladesh had been able to maintain the growth to make easy Bangladesh’s graduation as a developing nation.

Bangladesh has given its budget despite the global situation, she said.

‘The budget is not so big. But we have formulated the budget to make sure the country’s continued journey towards development,’ she added.

Special focus was given on essential commodities, health and education in the budget as the inflation doesn’t have impact on these, the prime minister said.

Sheikh Hasina said that her government had given family cards for the limited income people and was providing food assistances for the poor people.

The prime minister said that several allowances were being given for the poor and helpless people under the social safety net programme.

The AL chief said that her government’s biggest asset was to achieve the confidence and trust of the people for which they were voted to power time and again confronting all the conspiracies and plot at home and abroad.

‘There was a conspiracy to thwart the election (12th parliamentary polls). The opposition parties knew that the election would not be held, so they boycotted it. We could also realize that a conspiracy was there as well after the election,’ she said.

The prime minister said that they had taken risks after opening the election.

This time, AL got 223 seats singly and also secured 233 seats alone in the 2008 national election while the BNP alliance got 30 seats, she said.

‘Anybody or even the opposition parties could not raise any question about its credibility,’ she said.

The BNP boycotted the election in fear of defeat as they have no leaders to run the party accordingly while their top leaders have been accused of money laundering, corruption, August 21,2004 grenade attack case, and a 10-truck arms haul case, she added.