প্রকাশ: 26/05/2022
Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal has said that the
government is contemplating amnesty for bringing the laundered money back into
the country.
“We’re thinking of announcing amnesty for bringing the
smuggled money back,” he told reporters in briefing after the two consecutive
meetings of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) and Cabinet
Committee on Public Purchase on Thursday.
He said Bangladesh Bank will make more announcements in this
regard before the national budget is placed in Parliament.
He said the issue of amnesty will be reflected in the
national budget.
"The initiative will be taken by the Bangladesh Bank and
announced by it through circulars. But we don’t want to make any announcement
in this regard before placing the national budget in parliament”, he said.
The finance minister’s remarks came in response to the
reporters’ questions on the government’s initiative as Bangladesh Bank recently
announced that any person will be allowed to bring in upto $5000 from abroad
without any prior declaration and no question will be asked about the source of
the money.
Such an announcement from the central bank came to encourage
people to bring more US dollars against the backdrop of its prevailing crisis.
Recently, the greenback gained strength against the local
currency as the dollar rate went up to Tk 100 in the curb market while
officially Bangladesh Taka (BDT) was depreciated on a number of occasions.
Kamal said the initiative is being taken mainly to bring
back that money which was laundered from the country.
He, however, did not give any detail of the amount as to how
much money was laundered. “I can’t give you any idea how much money was
laundered. But we collect information from the media and other official and
non-official sources”, he said.
He said different countries are announcing amnesty like tax
exemption. “We’re also thinking so”.
The finance minister said he believes that the people who
laundered money will take advantage of the government’s amnesty as it is a good
scope for them.
Responding to a question on the issue, he said there is a
dollar crisis. “But it’s not at a level that would hamper our import. We have
enough dollars in our reserves to run the import business”, he said.
- UNB
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