Awami League general secretary Obaidul Quader on Monday urged the country’s people not to get confused by the deliberate propaganda of communal forces.

“The communal forces that want to see the country as a backward one are carrying out intentional propaganda against the country. I am calling upon the country’s people not to be misled by their propaganda,” he told a press conference at his secretariat office in Dhaka, BSS reports.

Quader, also the road transport and bridges minister, said the Bangladesh government has taken various precautionary measures to address the negative impacts of Russia-Ukraine war, economic blockade and the price hike of oil, gas and fertilisers in international market.

Many countries across the globe are struggling to deal with intolerable and skyrocketing inflation, while the inflation rates in the developed world are showing the severity of the global economic setback, he said.

The AL general secretary said there was inflation in Bangladesh was 7.56 percent in  last June, while it was 9.1 percent in the United States, 9.4 percent in the United Kingdom, 8.9 percent in Germany, 15.9 percent in Russia, 78.6 percent in Turkey, 9.4 percent in the Netherlands, 39.9 percent in Sri Lanka and 21.3 percent in Pakistan.

Many are trying to mislead people inside the country by talking about inflation, he said, adding that the inflation remains at the relatively tolerable level in the country after the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina government took precautionary measures to contain it.

Quader said an identified quarter is spreading propaganda saying that a power and energy crisis grips in the country. In fact, he said, the world's energy supply chain has become volatile at the time of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war after the global Coronavirus pandemic.

Stating that over 90 percent countries of the world depend on imports for primary energy, the minister said as an importing country, this situation has put an adverse impact on Bangladesh too.

Energy crisis continues in almost all countries of the world, including western ones, at this moment and they have drastically cut energy and power consumption to cope with the situation, he said.

Power production has also declined in many developed countries resulting in an inevitable impact on global economies and production systems, he added.

Referring to a recent headline of UK-based daily – Evening Standard - that ‘London narrowly avoided blackout as electricity prices surged last week’, Quader said the report of the newspaper highlighted that the UK was forced to pay 5,000 percent higher than the typical price for electricity to prevent a power blackout in south-east London.

He quoted a statement of New York City mayor Eric Adams as saying “We are in a financial crisis like you can never imagine....Wall Street is collapsing; we are in recession”.

The AL general secretary paid tribute to all the martyrs of the August 15 carnage, including Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and remembered the memory of all the martyrs with due respect.