Mamunur Rashid Rate My Professor

[Janne Desir]

Studentsrecite anti-corruption pledge at event organized by Transparency International: Without effective measures to address the persistent problem, Bangladesh's development strategy may not be sustainable (Credit: Sk Hasan Ali / Shutterstock.com)

Bangladesh has become a bit of a surprise for the international community. As measured by the UN, the country looks likely to be promoted from least-developed country (LDC) status to middle-income economy by 2024 due to its better health and education metrics and decreased economic vulnerability. The rate of poverty has fallen from 44.2 percent in 1991 to 14.8 percent in 2019. Also, other indicators such as life expectancy, literacy rate and per-capita food production have dramatically improved in the past few years.

The transformation of the Bangladesh economy challenges the World Bank orthodoxy that corruption is among the greatest obstacles to economic and social development. Adherents to this view point to the estimated US$20-40 billion stolen each year in low-income countries and to empirical studies that have found that corruption slows down economic growth. But since the 1960s, there is a school of thought in development studies that argues that corruption and development can co-exist, with bribery actually oiling the wheels of progress.

Remittance flows The Bangladesh economy rides on remittances from migrant workers. According to Mustafizur Rahman of the Centre For Policy Dialogue, every month about 50,000 Bangladeshis go abroad to work. Bangladesh is the eighth-biggest remittance recipient country in the world, with the inflow in fiscal 2019 amounting to more than US$16.4 billion, nearly double what it was in 2009. Saudi Arabia is the biggest source of funds, followed by the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Libya, Iraq, Singapore, Malaysia, the US and the UK. According to the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, 70 percent of remittances come from the Middle East.

Foreign direct investment FDI has been accelerating at a significant pace, especially in sectors such as power, food, banking, garments and textiles, and telecommunications. Net inflows in 2019 reached US$3.89 billion, compared with US$700 million a decade earlier. In 2016, the government set up the Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA) to broaden foreign investment into sectors that could drive new growth such as agribusiness, garments and textiles, leather goods, light manufacturing, energy, information and communications technology (ICT), and infrastructure.

Bangladesh governments since 2000 have taken steps to minimize corruption in society. In 2004, the ineffective Bureau of Anti-Corruption (BAC) was abolished and replaced by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC). Several laws were enacted to address the challenge including measures relating to public procurement, the right to information, whistle-blower protection, and the prevention of money laundering. Bangladesh signed the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) in 2007.

The NIS was rolled out in 2012 to launch an anti-corruption drive, setting out ten areas for action in the public sector and six in the private sector. Public-sector salary was doubled, many government departments went digital, and several state and non-governmental organizations fostered civic engagement to prevent corruption. The impact of these initiatives, however, was minimal, and they failed to prevent corruption in any significant way.

The anti-corruption efforts in Bangladesh have been driven mainly by following a donor-prescribed templates which do not provide for local solutions to local problems. These initiatives have had limited success because they have merely copied flagship campaigns that have not yielded meaningful results. They look good on paper but lack proper implementation.

Nurul Huda Sakib is an associate professor in the Department of Government and Politics at Jahangirnagar University in Dhaka, Bangladesh. From 2016 to 2018, he was in the Department of Government and International Relations of the University of Sydney in Australia, where he focused on public-sector ethics, corruption and South Asian politics. Email Dr Sakib

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