The Asian countries are holding major foreign currency reserves like China’s reserves of $3 trillion. India and China should maintain good relationship to benefit from the global value chain and integration is therefore required among the Asian countries.
They said Bangladesh’s position in the global value chain is at the lower end: buyers purchase items at low cost from here and sell at prices six to seven times higher. The country will have to reduce the gap in the global value chain and businesses should therefore improve negotiation skills.
Bangladesh’s trade gap has widened significantly in recent times and when its exports capacity is low. Vietnam – a regional competitor in the global market is now earning over $200 billion from export and they are right when they said Bangladesh as a LDC should focus on how to increase participation in global trade to improve its position.
They are also right when they say political willingness is important is this regard to strengthen the regional institutions like the South Asia Free Trade Agreement and South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. It is not possible to implement the regional economic zone and the economic union by 2020 in absence of political willingness. They have also laid emphasis rightly to stop capital flight; which is moving out country’s potential for investment. According to the Panama and Paradise Papers, $5 billion has been laundered from the country. Of the sum, 80 percent were laundered through mis-invoicing.
Political willingness is in fact necessary for any country to move forward. One has to look at the Asian Tigers to figure this out. The economic miracles of Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and others had occurred because of the willingness of the government to join hands with private sector for the benefit of the nation.
Unfortunately this is not getting due importance in Bangladesh. We have no national unity and also coherent policy on what to do to increase GDP. Energy, Housing, Communications and IT are all major thrust sectors; which need big push and that need major change in economic pattern. Coherent policies and fighting big corruption in all these areas are necessary for rapid growth.
But alas, bottlenecks like corruption, mismanagement and inefficient implementation of projects are slowing down growth. Income gap within the society is distorting growth pattern. Misuse of banking is retarding development. Structural shortcomings and inefficiencies need to be overcome. If we don’t become dynamic to shape our growth path, the country will continue to suffer setback when regional competitors are making great strides ahead. This is time to change the track.
