Bangladesh 5

Bangladesh not Aid-dependent country: Wallich

‘The government should be accountable to people, not to us or any other donor,’ Wallich said at a business audience on Sunday in response to remarks that the government seems to be more accountable to lenders than to the people. (The New Age, BD)

The World Bank’s country director, Christine I Wallich, has said Bangladesh is not an aid-dependent country as external assistance now accounts for less than five per cent of the GDP.

Due to dwindling share of external resources, development partners cannot influence the government, she said. ‘The government should be accountable to people, not to us or any other donor,’ Wallich said at a business audience on Sunday in response to remarks that the government seems to be more accountable to lenders than to the people.

‘We are trying to raise the people’s awareness to make the government accountable to them,’ Wallich told the discussion meeting on the World Bank’s role in the private sector organized by the Bangladesh Chamber of Industries.

Business leader Manzur Ahmed said in the absence of an effective parliament, the government was made accountable to the donors on different issues in the poverty reduction strategy review meetings. Former deputy prime minister, M Jamaluddin, stressed that the government should reduce its size, while the loss-making state-owned enterprises should be either privatized or shut down.

But Wallich said the size of the government in Bangladesh is small and can not be reduced further. ‘The most important thing is making the government functional and developing the capacity of public service delivery,’ she said.

Wallich said there are several reasons like corruption and inefficiency for the losses of the state-owned enterprises. She said Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation has been incurring huge losses due to oil price hike in the global market in response to which fuel prices were not adjusted locally.

‘But the private sector always demands that the government should not increase prices of energy and utilities,’ she added. Wallich said that, as a development partner, the World Bank like everyone also believes in free and fair election.‘The assets and incomes of the candidate should make public,’ she added.

‘But it is not our issue as we have to concentrate on development agendas,’ she said in response to a question raised by Awami League leader Faruk Khan MP. Wallich also praised significant achievements of Bangladesh in different areas of the social sector like primary education and gender disparity reduction. She, however, stressed the need for reduction of corruption in different sectors as well as continuation of reforms in the power and financial sectors.