Restructuring of bureaucracy a must for business, investment promotion

---

Inclusive economic growth and diversion of more resources for reduction of poverty are necessary for achieving national development swiftly, country chief of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said Tuesday.

"There is need to create and expand access to opportunities and more investment in health, education and safety net programmes. Alongside, the country needs big investment in infrastructure--energy, power generation, roads, railway and ports-- to attract further investment and ensure industrial development," the ADB country director Hua Du said at a luncheon meeting in Dhaka.

She was speaking on "Bangladesh Economy: Opportunities and Challenges" at the luncheon meeting, organised by the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Bangladesh at a city hotel.

President of the AmCham in Bangladesh Syed Ershad Ahmed presided over the meeting.

Hua Du said Bangladesh would fail to promote its businesses and attract investments in order to be a middle-income country by 2020 if its "sluggish" and "complex" bureaucratic system is not restructured.

"The caretaker government has implemented many landmark governance reforms. Unfortunately, one major reform that has remained untouched is the sluggish and complex bureaucratic structure of the government. In my view, this is the mother of all other reforms," she said.

"The pyramid bureaucratic structure and its archaic systems and procedures, inherited from the colonial days, are characterised by inefficiency, centralisation, lack of delegation and job description, too many tiers in the decision making process, archaic filing and noting system, lack of e-governance, and poor pay structure are out of place in the modern states," she said.

Highlighting some challenges for the economic development of Bangladesh, the ADB country director said: "Economic and social cooperation through forums like SAARC and BIMSTEC can indeed help the country not only to accelerate its economic development through promoting regional trade and investment, but would also protect the people from cross-border environmental and health risk."

"I would like to stress on upgrading and opening the Chittagong port for the use of eastern Indian states and other landlocked neighbouring countries and developing the country as a regional hub, which could be a major driver for the nation's economic development," she said.

About the higher food price, the ADB chief in Dhaka said, "Failure to contain higher food prices could seriously undermine macroeconomic and political stability."

"But over the medium to longer term, improving productivity by disseminating modern production technologies,