Journalists of Bangladesh have boycotted the central bank Governor and former senior secretary Abdur Rouf Talukder.
Rouf attended the traditional post-budget press conference, organised by the finance ministry in Dhaka on Friday. Finance Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali moderated the conference.
After reading out his written speech, Mahmood presented a question-answer session for the journalists over the proposed budget, which was placed in the parliament on Thursday.
As the floor opened for journalists, Economic Reporters’ Forum (ERF) President Mohammad Refayet Ullah Mirdha said, “The Bangladesh Bank governor banned journalists from entering the central bank. Following the decision, we decided that none of us would listen to him.”
“I draw your attention to the fact that he should not make any speech at the press conference. If he does, we will boycott the programme,” Mirdha remarked.
Hearing the remark, the audience loudly expressed their dissatisfaction with Rouf, shouting, “Shame on Rouf.”
The central bank governor answered many questions at the post-budget press conference. Due to the boycott by the economic reporters, Rouf performed as a silent observer at the approximate one-and-a-half-hour question-answer session.
The rest of the guests, however, participated in the session.
For the last three months, Abdur Rouf Talukder asked his officials not to permit journalists to enter the central bank. During these months, ERF held several meetings with the governor and other officials, but the issue is not resolved yet.
Even, banking sector reporters claimed that the governor is surveilling and harassing those officials who have good relations with journalists.
Central bank officials said that the governor does not want to disclose irregularities of the banks.
It should be noted that non-performing loans have risen over Tk 50,000 crore during the approximate two-year tenure of the governor, and he is trying to hide the information while the government is trying to reduce the amounts.
Though these subjects are monitored by the central bank, the country also witnessed record high inflation, severe reserve shortage and sloth growth of private credits.
