Finance Minister AMA Muhith on Sunday said there is no scope to raise any question about the government’s jurisdiction on taking decision on different policy matters during the election period. He made the remark about the government’s jurisdictional authority on taking policy decisions, in response to a reporter’s query following a meeting of the Cabinet Economic Affairs Committee that took several policy decisions on different issues. The Finance Minister presided over the meeting which was attended by the senior ministers. Muhith said the election-time government can take any policy decision depending on the importance and essential nature of the matters. Through this remark, he shifted from his earlier position as he had told reporters that an election-time government cannot take any policy decision. Defending his latest stance, the Finance Minister said that this practice started during the last caretaker government and the current government has been maintaining the trend. He said still the government very cautiously deals with the matters on policy decision as it refrained from holding ECNEC meeting that mainly takes the policy decisions. The Sunday’s Cabinet Economic Affairs body took four decisions including approving a proposal to wind up agreement of the state-owned Tabani Beverage Company Ltd with US-based Coca Cola company through paying off US$ 16 million, import of MoP fertilizer from Canada, construction of shopping mall-cum guest houses on the Railways lands in Comilla and Chittagong. Following the Economic Affairs body meeting, a meeting of the Cabinet Purchase Committee was also held with the Finance Minister in the chair. The meeting approved a total of 16 proposals including contract extension of two rental power plants — 55 MW diesel-fired Khulna Power Plant and furnace oil-fired 110 MW Khulna Power Company Ltd (KPCL). The government’s power purchase agreements with the two plants were extended for another five years. The other decisions include approval of 50,000 metric tons wheat import and 150,000 metric tons MoP fertilizer import from Russia. – UNB
