Ahsan Mansur: A personal note of gratitude 

I should start with a caveat. My relationship with Ahsan Bhai goes back to more than five decades: he was senior to me by a year in the Economics Department of Dhaka University.

We worked closely when he was seconded by IMF as an adviser to the National Board of Revenue. To indicate our closeness, in early nineties, I stayed in his palatial home in Virginia during my visits to Washington DC for credit negotiations with the World Bank and IMF.

Coming back to the subject. When I took the responsibility of the power and energy sector, in August '24, it was saddled with huge foreign currency debts to the tune of US$3.2 billion in unpaid bills. The gas, electricity suppliers, threatened to stop doing business with us, charged penal interests and included surcharge for the delayed payments in product prices.

Taka was depreciating fast and dollars were unavailable at the banks. My everyday routine included arranging Taka funds for energy payments, and then calling managing directors of commercial banks to supply US$ to meet our payment obligations. They would advise me to secure US$ allocations from the central bank as they had limited foreign currency to settle their own LCs, etc.

I would call Ahsan Bhai sometimes twice or thrice in a day in desperation. He would help in some cases and mostly advise me to be patient saying that he is working on stabilizing the exchange rate and to augment supply of dollars. Currency markets manipulators were looking for arbitrage opportunities trying to sink BDT further. Ahsan Bhai remained steadfast and didn't yield to the syndicate.

As an interim measure, we worked with the Finance Division on a guarantee scheme for the commercial banks. That helped a bit. But due to Ahsan Bhai's resolute stance and policy measures, free fall of BDT was stopped and FX reserve headed north. We would get needed dollars from the market without calling commercial banks MDs or the Governor.

Ahsan Bhai, you not only stabilized our currency from the brink of collapse but also helped us to shore up the energy sector by clearing most of our foreign currency debts, for which I remain personally indebted to you.

In plain language, we were staring at FX unavailability, sharp depreciation of Taka, huge energy sector unpaid bills, meant inability to supply energy to industries, fall in production and exports, and employment, all leading to predicted collapse of the economy à la Sri Lanka. Thanks to you and our efforts that didn't happen.

I wish, someday, our nation and posterity will arrange for you a better send off from office, for your contribution to the nation, at a critical time.

Muhammad Fouzul Kabir Khan is the former power, energy and mineral resources adviser of the recently dissolved interim government. The text of this article is taken directly from a post shared on his official Facebook profile.

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