Muhith dubs Dhaka-based admn corruption-prone

FE Team | Published: June 21, 2013 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

FE Report Finance Minister AMA Muhith said Thursday Bangladesh needs to take the administration to the local level to maintain economic growth and continue its success of poverty alleviation. Criticising the existing administration, he said: "There are 15 crore (150 million) people in the country. For this population, everything is decided from Dhaka. It is an impossible task. It is corruption-prone, inefficient and wasteful and it will never be able to achieve complete success." "We have to change our mindset of concentrating all powers in Dhaka. The situation must change. We have to think how we can take this administration to the local level," Mr Muhith said at the World Bank's poverty assessment report launching function in Dhaka Thursday. Mr Muhith said there is no alternative but to decentralise the administration to foster economic growth as well as cut poverty in the country. He said it is imperative to make a structural change of the government and administration. "It is a must to empower the local government decentralising the administration and government to get result of the economic growth." The Finance Minister said development of agriculture and rural transport has played a key role in poverty alleviation in the country. Yet, there is still much room for improvement in the fisheries and livestock sub-sectors of the agriculture sector in Bangladesh, he added. Mr Muhith said health and social complications are also impediments to poverty alleviation. "Climate change is also one of the major hurdles for the faster poverty cut in Bangladesh." He laid emphasis on a skillful human resource development for ensuring more economic growth of the country. Mr Muhith termed the World Bank report as a 'very valuable evaluation' and said it is 'very encouraging' to know that Bangladesh has done good progress in the South Asia region. Although the price shocks have lowered the poverty reduction rate in 2007-2008 period, the country has done well in the last one decade among the South Asian countries which is really an impressive result for us, he added.