Moving the growth engine

It does not matter how many or how much of the other growth-inducing factors are assembled. The growth engine will not move up and ahead until it is stoked well with fuel to run well. On countless occasions, the country's experts have been deliberating on the strategies to be adopted to set Bangladesh on a higher growth path with the goal of attaining middle income country status for it by 2021 and to become a major economy in the world by 2030. The great potential of this country in the economic fields have also been highlighted, time and again. The issues have like its abundance of easily trainable workers who can be made to work devotedly at far lower wages by the world's standards, relatively strong and stable macro economic fundamentals, a favourable policy environment for investments, etc., are well known for long. There is also no denying that from all these positives and more, a higher economic growth than the current nearly 6.0 per cent can be achieved by Bangladesh. However, the visions for the faster economic climbing up the ladder for Bangladesh depends on a much faster rate of industrialization and that, in turn, is too dependent on having the needed energy availability to drive such industrialization. The government points to years of neglect-- before the taking over by the present administration -- that has created the present energy crisis. No one will quite dispute this view as it is an objective one. But the failures in the past are no reasons for not becoming extremely serious in the present to make up for the past deficiencies and score successes in augmenting energy supplies with record speed. The present government unfurled with much fanfare its road map for the power sector's development about one a half years ago. It then gave a year by year scheduled targets of raising and sustaining power production. But in the over last several, the main projections for achieving a sustainable improvement in power supply has been missed every time. Akmal Hossain Kamalapur Dhaka