Kamal’s interview: FT publishes rejoinder from finance ministry

Financial Times on Thursday printed a rejoinder from Bangladesh Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal in connection with an interview published by the London-based daily on August 9.

The newspaper carried the full text of the rejoinder sent by Gazi Towhidul Islam, public relations officer of the finance ministry.

The rejoinder, as run in the FT, said the ministry felt the report's headline "Bangladesh's finance minister warns on Belt and Road loans from China" did not properly reflect the minister's actual position.

It said that the FT report mentioned Sri Lanka, which defaulted on its sovereign debt in May and is in negotiations with the IMF.

The report also said BRI loans had "exacerbated a severe economic crisis" in that country but it did not say that Chinese loans led to the defaulting; rather the problem arose from sovereign debt, according to the rejoinder.

Mustafa Kamal in the interview made clear that any project in any country could be financed if it is proven financially viable through rigorous study, said the rejoinder carried by the FT.

The minister stressed that Bangladesh would never take on finance from any authority if it were not feasible. He was in no way warning about Chinese loans, the rejoinder said.

To be clear, Bangladesh owes approximately $4bn to China -- a trifling amount compared with Bangladesh's gross domestic product of $416bn, and its external debt of $51bn (2021 figures), the rejoinder mentioned.

The FT report said "[Bangladesh] foreign reserves have also fallen to less than $40bn from more than $45bn a year ago".

The rejoinder said it should have been made clear that reserves stood at only $32.7bn in June 2019. By August 2021, they had risen 47 per cent to $48.1bn, the highest ever recorded in the history of Bangladesh.

Today, reserves stand at $40bn, enough for more than five months of import payments and beyond the risk threshold prescribed by the IMF, added the rejoinder.