Money laundering hurts me too: Finance minister
He said there are launderers across the world
Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal.
Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal has said money laundering hurts him like commoners as well.
"Some greedy people are laundering money abroad and we are taking initiatives to amend laws to identify them," he told reporters after a meeting of the cabinet committee on public procurement on Wednesday.
He said it would be easy to take action against launderers if they could be identified first and the reasons for committing such crimes could be known.
There are launderers across the world, he said.
He also said he believes no one would launder money abroad if there are investment opportunities here and if people think their investments would yield profits.
Kamal said foreign transactions used to be done manually in the past, but now it is a digital system.
When asked about the Tk6,351 crore rise in default loans in the banking sector despite giving the business community various facilities during the pandemic, he said such loans had not increased.
He said he would look into how the Bangladesh Bank had done the calculation and would then answer the question.
The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics has not yet released the final figure of GDP growth for the 2019-20 fiscal year. Kamal said everything is being delayed now as the situation is not normal and this must be accepted.
He said the planning minister would reveal the information in due course.
The minister further said Bangladesh would get extra return from loans given to Sri Lanka.
"The main reason for giving this loan is to build ties with them. Why should we not give loans if we get competitive return?"
