Staff Reporter:
An average of US$16 billion were illicitly siphoned off from Bangladesh every year during previous Awami League government of Sheikh Hasina’s corrupt autocracy, leaving the country in a state of plun-der, a White Paper report of Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) on the state of the economy said yester-day.
The CPD submitted its report to Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus at his office, said they were horrified by the level of corruption, plunder, and statistical manipulation conducted by the ousted Sheikh Hasina regime.
Dr. Debapriya Bhattacharya, a top economist and the distinguished fellow of the Dhaka-based think tank Centre for Policy Dialogue, headed the committee. He led his team at the handover ceremony.
Chief Adviser Prof Yunus thanked the committee for doing a landmark job, saying it should be pub-lished once it is finalised and be taught in textbooks in national college and university curricula.
“This is a historic document. It will show us the economy we inherited after the July-August mass upris-ing. The nation will be benefitted from this document,” Chief Adviser said in his short speech before receiving the White Paper.
“Our blood curdles to know how they plundered the economy. The sad part is they looted the economy openly. And most of us could not summon courage to confront it,” he said.
“Even the multilateral agencies that monitor Bangladesh’s economy were also largely silent when this plunder took place,” Prof. Yunus said.
Head of the committee, Debapriya Bhattacharya, said they worked independently without any interfer-ence from the government.
“The problem is deeper than what we have thought,” he said, adding that the 30-chapter and 400-page White Paper will show how crony capitalism gave birth to the Oligarchs, who controlled the policy framing.
Committee member Mustafizur Rahman said they examined seven large projects out of 29 projects with over Tk 10,000 crore expenditure outlays for each. The total expenses on 29 large projects were Taka 7,80,000 crore equivalent to US$87 billion.
The estimated initial cost of the seven examined projects was Taka 1,14,000 crore. The project costs were later revised to Taka 1,95,000 crore by adding many components, showing an inflated land price, and manipulating the purchase.
The project costs were raised almost 70 percent without analyzing the cost benefit, he said suggesting for a special prosecution against the persons involved with the ridled corruption.
Committee member Prof. AK Enamul Haque said in the last 15 years over Tk 700,000 crore was spent on the Annual Development Program (ADP) and 40 percent of that money was plundered by bureau-crats.
Committee member Mohammad Abu Eusuf revealed that the amount of tax exemption during the past regime was six percent of the total GDP of the country.
If it could be reduced to half, the education budget could be doubled and the health budget could be tri-pled, he said.
M. Tamim, another member of the committee, said US$30 billion was invested for power generation, and if the kickback was considered 10 percent, the amount would be at least $3 billion.
Finance Adviser Salehuddin Ahmed, Bangladesh Bank Governor Ahsan H Mansur, Principal Secretary Sirajuddin Sathi, and Senior Secretary Lamiya Morshed were present on the occasion.
The report titled- “Dissection of a Development Narrative” is expected to be made available for the pub-lic soon.
