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Bangladesh economy: 40 years on

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Bangladesh economy: 40 years on
Posted on March 17, 2011

Bangladesh economy: 40 years on

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Bangladesh economy: 40 years on

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Photo: id work /getty images

Mamun Rashid

Last week, I had some interesting discussions with a few of the shakers and movers of Bangladesh economy during the last 40 years. Most of them played a direct role in our war of liberation and had something to do with transition or crisis management of our economy.

While many of them gave credit to inward remittance, productivity improvement in agriculture, economic liberalisation since the nineties, success of our apparel industry, some of them also gave credit to shift in global political and economic imperatives, change in the economic structure of our society, role of the development partners, significant role played by education and overseas travel as well as migration by much more Bangladeshis, than one could anticipate. One or two of them also pointed to lessons learned from famine in 1974, improvement in the communication sector, especially increase of cell phone users.

Most of the developed nations and international aid agencies barely had any interest in stepping into Bangladesh during the early seventies. However, Bangladesh managed to march on, despite natural disasters and political turbulence at frequent intervals. But as it progresses, one of its core productive sectors, agriculture, started to get overshadowed by industrialisation. Investors started to shy away and so did our human resources.

In 1974, the agriculture sector took a massive hit from a famine that lasted for ten months. Naturally, food security became a high priority. After more than a decade, the cloud finally began to move away as food production started to gain momentum. Most of this success can be traced to the introduction of high-yielding modern varieties (MV) of rice. Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) has so far released fifty-seven MVs (53 inbred and 4 hybrids). The MVs developed in the 1980s and 1990s are suitable for varying ecosystems and have wide disease and insect resistance.

In the meantime, ready made garments (RMG) industry started to emerge slowly yet noticeably and pushed industrialisation to further dominate the country’s GDP. From the ’90s to 2010, industrial production occupied a new height, at 30% from 20%, whereas agricultural production slipped to below 20%.

Enhanced access to education greatly helped to achieve gender balance, impacting both social and economic activities. This, along with continuous reduction in poverty and improved health service, illustrated a completely reworked picture of Bangladesh.

The 1974 famine, as mentioned earlier, pushed people, especially in rural Bangladesh, to look for increasing their earnings, hence they started to look at overseas job markets, especially in the Middle East. Today, almost 8 million Bangladeshis are working abroad and inward remittances, mostly from the blue collar workers, has become the mainstay of our economy, more importantly rural economy.

The wind of change all over certainly started to move things positively; starting from the change in public mindset to policy makers. For more than two decade after the liberation war, the female population was confined to household affairs. This huge workforce slowly but surely came to realise their potential in the early ’90s. The trend became too important not to be noticed by various international aid agencies or development partners, when 60%-70% of the female population gradually started to contribute to national GDP. On the other hand, the agricultural sector also managed to maintain noticeable growth.

We saw the spectacular rise of Bangladesh entrepreneurship during 1985 to 2010. Small and medium enterprises (SME) improved the situation to a great extent. NGOs/MFIs played a significant role in facilitating rural entrepreneurship.

Changed global development imperatives, including change in the mindset of the senior management of the development agencies, also helped Bangladesh to remodel its development agenda, continuously creating opportunity for private sector operators to take a lead. No doubt it was very tough to manage this transition, if not toughest for Bangladesh, where “contribution to society,” “public interest” or even “democracy” have different meanings to different people.

Even the rise of the media (print and electronic, more importantly electronic) helped in shaping the people’s mindset, transition to democracy and crises management, especially during the last decade or so. Bangladesh (with credit going to some bi-lateral aid agencies) also managed to significantly improve her crisis management capability during the last 10-15 years.

However, Bangladesh needs to move on, needs to move faster than before to keep its 160 million people (increasing by around 1.4% each year) fed, when we are losing almost 1% of our agricultural land to habitat and industrialisation. 7% to 8% GDP growth necessitates massive investment in the manufacturing sector, and for that we need power, gas, roads, railways, bridges and other infrastructures.

We need to have clear visibility regarding drawing a balance between the agriculture, industry and manufacturing sectors. We also need to put our act together to reduce increasing regional disparity, and strengthen local government, civil administration and the judiciary. In order to get into the trajectory of a middle income country, the laundry list should also include improving overall health and education infrastructure, and access to international funding sources to finance the growth of infrastructure. Drastic improvement in our governance model and political tolerance is also very much needed for policy continuity and sustainable growth.

Bangladesh is no more a “bottomless basket” that we used to be labeled as. With respectable social fabric, above average work ethics, increasing women’s engagement, almost independent media and civil society, it is becoming a “Development Paradox,” if it has not already become one. The international community, and more importantly our “peers,” is watching us. Let us all rise to the expectation of the times.

The writer is a banker and economic analyst. E-mail: mamun1960@gmail.com
 
Bangladesh economy: 40 years on
Posted on March 17, 2011
The writer is a banker and economic analyst. E-mail: mamun1960@gmail.com

30 years DCC outlook has fallen through deception crack and here comes 40 years outlook. Written none other than Mamum Rashid, Citi bank N.A Bangladesh chief. This is same Mamun Rashid who is sponsored by Awami regime as front runner for Prof. Yunus Grameen bank MD post.

Bangladeshis has more to catch up on what's going in the country behind glossy outlook by awami regime.
 
30 years DCC outlook has fallen through deception crack and here comes 40 years outlook. Written none other than Mamum Rashid Citi bank N.A Bangladesh chief. This is same Mamun Rashid who is Awami regime sponsored front runner for Prof. Yunus Grameen bank MD post.

Bangladeshis has more to catch up what's going on the country behind glossy outlook by awami regime.
I think Bangladesh has done good in 40 years, in my opinion politics is dragging us back.. the same thing is all over south asia but as for Bangladesh over the past years we have done a great job, Awami league and BNP confuse me..
 

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