Bangladesh stands 10th on a list of the developing countries classed as 'receivers of licit or recorded financial transfers' during 1980-2012, apart from witnessing substantial flight of capital.
According to the findings carried in a new report of Global Financial Integrity (GFI) for the period of 33 years, the country's cumulative receipts of recorded transfers stood at $116.8 billion.
The GFI report also mentioned that since the late 1990s, developing countries, including Bangladesh, had lost $16.3 trillion through broad leakages in the balance of payments (BoP), trade misinvoicing and recorded financial transfers.
"These resources represent immense social costs that have been borne by the citizens of developing countries around the globe," it argued.
The Washington-based research organisation's estimation is based on the data of capital, current, and financial accounts involving the BoP paradigm.
Recorded transfers mean a country's licit documented or legal transfers of the financial assets between itself and the world.
"The countries receiving financial resources are those that have run current account deficits over the period as a whole, led by India, Mexico, Turkey and the Philippines, in that order," says the GFI report.
"In contrast, China and some oil exporters like Russia, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Malaysia have provided such resources to the rest of the world due to their current account surpluses," added the report, titled 'Financial Flows and Tax Havens: Combining to Limit the Lives of Billions of People'.
Typically, countries with current-account deficits receive capital on a net basis (in order to finance the deficit), and those running a surplus provide capital to the rest of the world.
The research outfit compiled the data for 153 developing countries using the BoP Manual-5 of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This manual defines recorded transfer as 'the sum of the financial account (net), capital transfers (net), and current transfers (net).'
GFI, along with the Centre for Applied Research at the Norwegian School of Economics and a team of global experts, conducted the study whose report was released Monday.
The report mentioned that developing countries effectively served as net-creditors to the rest of the world with tax havens playing a major role in the flight of unrecorded capital.
The research found out that net resource transfers (NRT) for all developing countries had been mostly large and negative since the early 1980s, indicating sustained and significant outflows from the developing world.
The report defines NRT as net recorded flows into or out of a country inclusive of outflows of illicit and unrecorded capital.
While the research organisation's annual report on illicit financial flows provide detailed picture of illegal outflow of financial resources from the developing countries, the current report tries to calculate the net resource transfers.
It is a country's net external position with the world and provides the broadest picture of a country's gain or loss of resources. GFI calculated it as recorded transfers (RecT) less illicit outflows (trade misinvoicing + change in external debt).
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