UNB, Yokohama (Japan) :
Finance Minister AMA Muhith, who is now here to attend the 50th Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors of ADB, on Friday said there will be measures in the next national budget for tackling outflow of money from Bangladesh.
“We’ve found some loopholes and I think there’ll be some steps in the next budget to check such outflow of money (from Bangladesh),” he told reporters at the Pacifico Yokohama Conference Center.
The Finance Minister came up with the remarks when a reporter drew his attention to a recent report of the Global Financial Integrity (GFI) published.The report said trade mis-invoicing and hot money outflows cost Bangladesh as high as $7.58 billion on average annually. This is the estimated amount of average annual outflow of dirty money from Bangladesh during the last one decade (2005-2014).
Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a Washington-based research organization, unveiled the estimate in its latest report titled “Illicit Financial Flows to and from Developing Countries: 2005-2014.”
The report mentioned that illicit financial outflows from Bangladesh ranged between 12 percent to 17 percent of the country’s annual trade. It also put Bangladesh’s total trade value for 2005-2014 at $446.153 billion.
If the 17 percent of trade value turned into illicit financial outflows, the amount stood at $75.84 billion in last 10 years. If it is 12 percent or minimum, even then the annual outflow reached $5.35 billion.
Asked if such amount of fund is being siphoned off from the county annually, Muhith replied in the negative, saying the government has been identifying some loopholes in this regard.
Replying to another question, he said it was beyond his knowledge whether any government organisation had conducted any survey to determine the actual outflow of money from Bangladesh over the years. Meanwhile, the previous report of GFI released on December, 2015 showed that the annual average outflow of money from Bangladesh was $5.58 billion during 2004-2013. According to the latest count, illicit financial outflows from Bangladesh stood at $9.10 billion in 2014 as it is the amount of worth 13 percent of total trade in the year under review. The latest report said that IFFs from developing and emerging economies reached near $1 trillion in 2014. The GFI study pegs illicit financial outflows at 4.2 to 6.6 percent of developing countries’ total trade in 2014.
The latest report is also different from the previous one as it is ‘the first global study at GFI to equally emphasise illicit outflows and inflows.’
Unlike the previous years, this year’s report does not mention country specific amount of illicit financial outflows or dirty money. Dirty money means money earned mostly through illegal ways and also transferred outside the country illegally.
GFI’s measures of illicit financial flows stem from two sources. One is the deliberate misinvoicing in merchandise trade and the other is leakages in the balance of payments or hot money flows.
