Jumbangla Desk: In the changing situation of the country, Bangladesh is taking several important proposals to the upcoming World Bank and IMF Annual Meeting. In this meeting, Bangladesh will hold a series of separate meetings with different countries as well as World Bank and IMF on bilateral issues on the side line. Three issues will dominate these meetings. Most of these will come from securing an additional $3 billion loan commitment from the IMF. The second importance is to seize the smuggled money from Bangladesh in the related countries and the third importance is to portray the July-August genocide and 15 years of looting by the ruling Awami League government.

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According to sources, the meeting will be held in Washington, the capital of the United States, from October 21 to 26. Representatives of World Bank and IMF member countries will participate in it. On behalf of Bangladesh, representatives of the Ministry of Finance and the Governor of Bangladesh Bank will participate. Earlier, the former governor of Bangladesh Bank, Abdur Rauf Talukder, had led two consecutive meetings of the two organizations. After the fall of the Awami League government on August 5, the new interim government took over the responsibility of running the country. As a result, the topic of discussion has also changed for Bangladesh in the new situation. In the previous meetings, only additional support from the two organizations and the development of the country were presented. This time a different context has been added.

The dollar crisis has become evident in the country for more than two and a half years. To overcome this crisis, the new government has asked the IMF for another 3 billion dollars. Earlier, the IMF approved a loan proposal of 4.7 billion dollars in favor of Bangladesh on January 30, 2023. On February 1 of that year, 476.3 million dollars were released as the first installment of the loan. 68 million 10 million dollars for the second installment in December of the same year. On June 24, 115 million dollars were released for the third installment. A total of 231 million dollars was received in three installments. The fourth installment is expected to be received by December.

An IMF mission visited Bangla from September 24 to September 30 to review the overall economic situation of the country and the progress of implementation of the conditions of the fourth installment due to the proposal to increase the scope of the ongoing loan program by another 3 billion dollars. The mission issued a statement on September 30. Welcoming the reform measures taken by the Bangladesh government, the IMF said, they agree in principle to provide additional assistance in this work. A detailed discussion on this issue will be held at the upcoming IMF annual meeting. In continuation of this, Bangladesh has already made necessary preparations. IMF has collected various data from Bangladesh as part of preparation in this regard. In the light of this, the IMF will prepare a report which will be presented to its Executive Council meeting. Before this, the issue of additional loan assistance with Bangladesh will be finalized through a side line meeting at the annual meeting.

Meanwhile, during the last Awami League government, the businessmen close to the government have smuggled huge sums of money out of the country. Besides, ministers, MPs and political leaders have also smuggled money. Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit has already collected a lot of information about the destination of these money and who smuggled them. In the light of these facts, the meeting will discuss with the representatives of the concerned countries. The finance ministers of the member countries and central bank governors participated in the meeting. They are the proper authority to confiscate the money laundered. Because of this, in that meeting Bangladesh delegation will meet with 10-12 countries where money has been smuggled from Bangladesh.

A delegation from Bangladesh will go to participate in the meeting with those countries. They will meet individually with the World Bank and IMF as well as other development partners and countries. The meetings will discuss seizure of smuggled assets.

According to sources, some ministers and businessmen of the last government from Bangladesh have smuggled money to some countries including UK, USA, Canada, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Thailand, Mauritius, Belarus, Switzerland, India. With those assets, they are doing business by forming companies in those countries, as well as keeping some money as term deposits in banks. Bangladesh's current strategy is that those money cannot be brought to the country now. To bring it back to the country, multi-faceted complications have to be faced. For this reason, they want to bring only the control of the government by keeping those resources in the state in which they are in the country. That is, if there is an investment in a company, it wants to bring the ownership of that company from the individual to the control of the government. At the same time, if they are in a foreign bank, they only want to change the account by keeping it in that bank. Now as a trafficker. It wants to bring it under the control of the government.

Bangladesh will hold a meeting with the representatives of those countries regarding these goals. In the meeting, the country will propose to seize the assets of the smugglers for the time being. For this, all necessary information-proofs will be given about those who have smuggled money.

In the meeting, the government will also discuss with the World Bank and other development partners. Discussions will be held on increasing credit provision including discounting the money stuck in the pipeline. Apart from this, the issue of state reform and genocide during the outgoing government will also be highlighted in the changing situation of the country.