International donor projects against national interests

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Staff Correspondent - The Bangladesh Today
http://www.thebangladeshtoday.com/archive/April%2008/27-04-2008.htm

The economists called for transparency in the donor agency-funded projects in the greater interest of the nation. They made the demand at the national consultation titled "A Reality Check on the ADB's Operations in Bangladesh:
Impacts of Policies and Projects on People's Life and National Economy" organized by 'Voice', an NGO, at the
National Press Club on Saturday. The country should not indiscriminately accept the prescriptions of the World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Trade Organisation (WTO) and Asian Development Bank (ADB) as these international agencies are working together with one another in order to create a propitious atmosphere throughout the world so that the powerful states and their multi-national companies can achieve their goals without any obstruction anywhere.

The ADB has been working in Bangladesh in the name of implementing the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) to alleviate poverty. But the agency is continuously interfering into the country's policy formulation activities in the interest of some powerful states and multi-national organizations though it has no jurisdiction to do this, they observed.
The international lending agency frequently putting pressure on Bangladesh to denationalize the service sectors, ensure rule of law and build up an
import-dependent economy to ensure free access of the multi-national companies to the local markets, they said.
Criticizing the ADB's move to compel the government to privatize the Bangladesh Railway, they said, the agency along with the WB, IMF and WTO made the then BNP-Jamaat government to denationalize the Adamjee Jute Mills to destroy the country huge potential jute industry in a bid to help flourish the jute sector of other countries.
Now this agency is trying to brand the country's railway sector as a corruption-gripped and loss-making sector in many ways in a bid to pave the way for denationalizing the environment-friendly public transportation so that the multi-national companies can invest in this industry, they said calling upon the government to take immediate steps to develop the country's railways and water ways, to stop environment pollution and save huge foreign currency. But the international agencies prefer the road transportation development in Bangladesh though the road transport system consumes huge hard-earned foreign exchanges and vast areas of cultivable lands of the country, they said.