Manifesto for Youth and Dignity Exclusive Interview with Abdullah Al Faisal Centrist Nation

I'm Saki Pruttoy. I'm here at Lakeshure Hotel Gulchan. National Citizen Party NCP just presented their election manifesto for 2026 national election. Abdullah Alisel, he presented the financial vision of National Citizen Party. We particularly focus on environment economics, finance and banking sector reform. Actually we identified four problems for the next government. So it has to res any political government has to resolve it. The number one problem is like tax to GDP. Number two is the export concentration. Then we have problem like investment like foreign investment and we have problem in our financial sector. So whenever any government come into power they has to resolve it otherwise this country cannot be workable. So we are hopeful we have to do something for the country and NCP would like to present manifesto that is practical and reasonable. So we primarily focus on on revenue collection. So there are lot of slide you'll see in our manifesto on revenue collection. So we have given direct view how we will raise the tax to GDP and that is missing in any other particle political parties manifest you have already gone through like BNB Jamat and other stuff and other parties. So we were primarily focused on tax to GDP because if we would like if we can increase the tax to GDP then our capacity for expanding in healthcare in education will go up then automatically we we can do the social security and other stuff. You did mention CBDC, central bank digital currency and globally there is kind of one kind of rhetoric going on about CBDC that is kind of authoritarian and it puts the government in the position of power. they can manipulate anything and everything. They can cut off the income of any person on their bank account. So in Bangladesh we have seen authoritarian governance in the past. So do you think it's be it's going to be really practical in the situation? Okay, we have to focus on digital currency or digital payment because if you if you look into the global political and economic situation in last one month you can see there is lot of disruption in the world level. So we have to be very focused on what we are doing. So unless we are going into the digital economy or formal economy, we cannot raise our tax to GDP. So we have to focus on digital currency. So we are planning for CBDC but it will take time like it it will take at least three years for the central bank to launch the CBDC and by this time you will see lot of countries coming with the idea because now all the countries are focusing on stable coin that's not the bitcoin or other stuff. So our CBDC will be stable coin that will be packed with gold and other stuff. So that will be interesting guess and we have to do this otherwise we cannot reduce the corruption. You know there are lot of black money in the economy. So if you would like to bring this black money into the formal economy you have to go into the digital economy. Okay. would like to ask about the one card that Nah actually stated. Nagi card. Naguri card the single card that will have everything. So again without actually going through all the reforms that actually puts power back to the hand of the people instead of the government do you think it's good idea to give more power to the government? actually there are lot of social security package in the government segment. If you look into the budget there is huge allocation for social security but the ultimate beneficiaries are not getting. So that's the primary issue. So we have 1 cr smart card in our economy. you already know it guess. So but it unfortunately failed because the affiliated political parties member are taking the benefits. So we'd like to give the benefits to the end users. That's the primary purpose. So that's why we have to connect everything with NID and without doing this we cannot we cannot give the proper social security to the proper person. That's the primary idea and what we believe it is possible and in our miniface 2 we have already mentioned we'll be protecting the data of every users. So that's the primary purpose and we have come up with the data center idea as well that will be owned by government and no one will will get the access. So there will be definitely privacy. please look we have to focus on transparency and reliability. The government should be transparent. The government should be reliable. we see the worst one the government. You you have seen in last 17 years or last 54 years. We are expecting better government in future and they will pro definitely protect every user's data. So that's the primary vision and we already mentioned it because we know that sort of question will be coming to light. So we already mentioned it. We'll be protecting every data with the data center that will be owned by governments. Okay. So that brings me to my last question. You mentioned that you might want to make the whole economy formal. So how do you actually make it possible? how can you tax people that do not pay tax? Okay. so that's the primary idea. So let's say in Bangladesh there are 5 crore families. So every families are using utilities like at least electricity. So if you can look into the electricity data we have also mentioned it as well. So you know about credit scoring. So Bangladesh bank has already given license to five companies for credit scoring. So with this credit scoring data and utility data we'll be analyzing what is the actual consumption and cost. Let's say if you have more money you will be spending more on electricity. If you have less money then you will not pay that much bill on utility. You do not have AC on each room or air purifier or your heater or anything else. So our idea is to get access to this data and you know around 80 million people in Bangladesh are using smartphone now. So we are expecting more people will be going into the digital phone or smartphone then automatically within next three four years there will be there will be lot of internet penetration and unique penetration will go up significantly by next 2 three years guess. So we will be definitely focusing on that. You know the story of MFS the micro mobile financial services because doing outstanding in this sector and they already convert lot of users you know most of the people are in Bangladesh are unbanked but they use MFS so we can do this if if the government is focused then it is possible we all right thank you so much for being with us you have wonderful