Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal has admitted that the idea of public private partnership (PPP) has failed to meet the expectation. 

“Actually, we could not sell the PPP idea properly. But now work has started. We have to give the time... Still we’ve been facing that teething problems”, he told reporters after a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) on Thursday. 

The Cabinet committee in principle decided to drop a project “Construction of Laldia Bulk Terminal” from the government’s PPP list. Now, the Chattagram Port Authority (CPA) will implement the project by its own fund.  

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Earlier, there was decision to implement the project through PPP by the CPA on 59.87 acres of land at Laldia Char area on the right bank of the Karnaphuli River.    

 Kamal said the government believes it would overcome the problems facing with the PPP. 

He said now the government has been implementing projects by its own fund as there is no shortage of money. 

“We need foreign direct investment under PPP....the more FDI attraction means the more benefits”, he said. 

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“But we could not attract DFI as we didn’t have adequate infrastructures”, he said adding, infrastructures mean physical and non-physical both. 

The finance minister said the government believes that as the country is having infrastructures, there will be no problem in attracting FDI and PPP projects. 

Responding to another question, he said that he would try to find out if money from the government’s stimulus package was diverted to the country’s stock market as reported by media. 

“I would inform you after my own finding whether the allegation is true or not. But so far the fund from stimulus package is not supposed to go elsewhere is it was provided to eligible beneficiaries from specific targeted sectors. 

Meanwhile, the CCEA approved a proposal of the Ministry of Liberation War to award the contract to an event management company through direct procurement method without tender process to arrange the concluding programmers of the golden jubilee of the independence celebration with due manner to showcase the country at home and abroad. 

It also approved another proposal to purchase Oracle Cloud for the Bangladesh Data Centre Company Limited through direct procurement method.