The ruling Awami League-led government in Bangladesh Sunday strongly defended the whopping USD 1 billion loan deal with India, dismissing the opposition BNP's charges as a "disgusting attempt to spread falsehood."
Foreign Minister Dipu Moni blasted BNP leader MK Anwar MP for his "misleading statement" on the USD 1 billion loan deal with India during the
visit of Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. The loan amount is the largest line of credit received by Bangladesh from a foreign country.
"This is nothing but a disgusting attempt to spread falsehood," she told a press briefing a day after the two countries signed the deal on soft Indian credit for communication and other infrastructures in Bangladesh with 1.
75 per cent interest, the rate BNP alleged seven times higher than that from any multinational bank or donor agency.
She added: "such parochial attitude is not politics the opposition made such remarks to make an issue of theirs since they don't have any."
Moni particularly criticised Anwar, who made the allegation on BNP's behalf ahead of Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee's Dhaka visit to witness
the signing of the agreement, saying the bureaucrat-turned-politician himself knew well about the falsehood as he had served in Economic Relations Department which dealt with such foreign deals.
The foreign minister's comments came a day after Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith refuted the BNP allegation over the interest rate saying "this is so utterly false".
BNP called the USD 1 billion deal with India contrary to the national interest as "the government is getting the loan from the Indian bank with an interest rate seven times higher than that from any multinational bank or donor agency".
But Muhith said the interest could only be lower than the 1.75 per cent in cases of concessional credits very often offered by the donors or lending agencies while during their past 1991-1996 regime BNP had borrowed loans of similar type with as high as 5 per cent interest.
"Different development partners, including World Bank, charge the same amount of commitment fees," he said.
The foreign minister Sunday supplemented Muhith saying the own interest rate of Exim Bank, through which the credit was channelled, was 4
per cent while Bangladesh got it at 1.75 per cent interest rate as the Indian government was
subsidising the rest of the amount.
"This could be called as concessional loan," she said.