Government criticised for getting trapped in suppliers’ credits

Speakers at a seminar on Saturday said the present government has shown more interest in suppliers’ credits that breed corruption and generate quick bucks for a handful of politicians, businessmen and bureaucrats.

They also said the government should break the evil spell of ‘crony capitalism’ for checking income inequality reaching danger level of 0.5 in Gini index from the current rate of 0.48 per cent while taking part in a seminar titled ‘the Belt Road Initiative and the New International Economic Order’.

Organised by the Workers Party of Bangladesh at Jatiya Press Club, the speakers at the event urged the government to find a way to strike a  ‘delicate balance’ in its external and economic policies amid changes with Asian power houses like China, India and Japan poised to shape the new world order against the backdrop of the declining influence of the west led by the US.

The participants included noted economist Rehman Sobhan, former Chittagong University economics department teacher Mainul Islam, former ambassador Enam Ahmed Chowdhury and workers party general secretary Fazle Hossain Badsha.

Workers Party president Rashed Khan Menon, who presided over the seminar, said globalisation promoted by the rich western countries increased inequality in the third world countries.

Rehman Sobhan said over the last two decades China has steadily built strong commercial ties across the world and ‘the Belt and Road Initiative’ adopted since 2014 should be viewed as a continuum of China’s expanded global economic reach and resource base.

He said it was an overstatement when some of the former colonial powers’ said that the aggressive lending by China to the poor countries through the BRI for the development of infrastructures was nothing more than a ‘debt trap’.

The BRI is a global initiative to construct a new international order based on accelerating development and the vision to end poverty across the south from within the framework of a more equitable world order, he said.

He, however, said identifying projects with the BRI initiative and regional cooperation between Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar are crucial for development of the region.

Rehman Sobhan lamented that BCIM conceived even before the BRI was still in paperwork due to ‘non-cooperation from India.’

Mainul Islam was more critical about India’s current foreign policy, saying that Delhi wanted to isolate China by establishing BBIN (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal) pact for cooperation among the neighbours in this part of the world.

But BBIN cannot be a substitute for BCIM, he said.

Mainul criticised the present government for inclining towards suppliers’ credits and taking up mega projects one after another without doing any feasibility studies.

He said the Payra Port will not serve the need of a deep sea port as PM Sheikh Hasina, because of a last minute persuasion by Delhi, did not award the construction works of a deep sea port in Sonadia to China during her visit to Beijing in June, 2014.

According to Mainul, rejection led to the dumping of the deep sea port project in Sonadia as it also forced China to look for an alternative in Myanmar to establish a deep sea port in this region.

He noted that India was constructing road network in seven-sister to get access to the deep sea port in Myanmar.

He reminded the Awami League government that the reluctance expressed by India, Russia and China for forcing Myanmar to take back nearly one million Rohingyas who have taken shelter in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar was nothing but part of our geopolitical reality.

China India and Russia were in good terms with the resourceful Myanmar, he said, adding the country needed to strike a delicate balance and not antagonise India to benefit from the BRI.

Fazle Hossain Badsha echoed the view of Mainul and explained that Bangladesh cannot antagonise India since the country shares its longest land borders with India.

Enam Ahmed Chowdhury said China needed active participation of other countries to carry forward its goals related to BRI.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net