THE nation will examine data anomalies that allegedly inflated economic performance during former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s regime, in an effort to stamp out corruption that plagued the South Asian nation for most of the past 15 years.
The country’s interim government has asked Debapriya Bhattacharya, an economist and public policy analyst, to produce a “white paper” documenting mismanagement under Hasina’s rule. Bhattacharya has 90 days to write the paper and plans to submit an initial report to Nobel-winning banker Muhammad Yunus, who’s leading Bangladesh’s temporary administration.
“We have a serious problem with data,” Bhattacharya, 68, said in an interview in Dhaka on Saturday. “Data were manufactured. Data were suppressed. I call that data anarchy.”
From a distance, Bangladesh was widely perceived as an economic success story, propelled by the world’s second-largest garment exports industry. But Bhattacharya said Hasina’s administration likely released inaccurate data on exports, inflation and gross domestic product, creating “unprecedented economic vulnerabilities”.
Bhattacharya identified three key setbacks for Bangladesh: macroeconomic instability, inflation and a dearth of foreign exchange reserves.
Stability was disrupted over the last couple of years and Hasina blamed it on the Ukraine war, which “we thought was not very justified,” he said.
“This is one of the paradoxes. You have 5% to 7% steady growth and you do not collect taxes, which essentially means that either the growth was fictitious, or those who benefitted from the income generated from the growth did not come under the tax net,” Bhattacharya said. “Maybe a large part of it was funnelled out of the country.” — Bloomberg
