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I don’t need to learn the protocol from anybody: Saifur |
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December 1, 2000
Dhaka-- (Bangla2000)- Former finance minister M Saifur Rahman yesterday said if the meeting of Bangladesh Development Forum does not take place in April, it may be due to lack of confidence of development partners in the present government. “They aren’t happy with fiscal and monetary management of the government,” he told UNB yesterday. World Bank officials in Dhaka also hinted that the Bangladesh Aid Consortium meeting in Paris, an annual get-together of development partners to assess Bangladesh’s development needs, may not be held before the next general elections due in the middle of next year. Multilateral and bilateral development partners meeting in Paris review Bangladesh development strategies and assess aid requirements to support the development programme. Saifur felt there would be a negative impact on planning the national budget for the next fiscal year if donors do not meet this time. Government’s extravagant expenditure in unproductive sectors, cumulative failure of monetary policy, biggest ever 8 percent fiscal deficit and increasing purchases with high-cost suppliers’ credits have already frustrated the donors prompting World Bank and IMF to drastically slash assistance, he said. Saifur refuted the observation of Finance Minister SAMS Kibria that his (Saifur) recent meeting with World Bank mission chief was unprecedented and beyond the protocol. “BNP has been in power for 12 years. I was a chairman of World Bank Group. So I don’t need to learn the protocol from anybody,” retorted Saifur Rahman. Referring to Kibria’s comment that donor agencies are not supposed to talk about politics with the opposition, Saifur said all economic programmes are essentially linked to politics. Today no element of economics would be found without political implication. World Bank is pursuing ownership development process and they quite rightly sought opinion from the major opposition BNP, he said. “It (World Bank) shared with us their strategy of supporting development activities here in the coming years,” he said, referring to his meeting with the Bank’s country director Fred T Temple. Good governance, judicial improvement, administrative reforms, establishment of rule of law and curbing corruption were discud and all these issues are closely related to politics. The Bank is now assisting the improvement of electoral process which is not also out of politics, he added. |