Public institutions face immense capacity building challenges

Bangladesh Bank Governor Dr Atiur Rahman Thursday said public institutions in developing economies like Bangladesh face immense capacity building challenges in their efforts of creating and sustaining growth and development momentum amid gnawing shocks and crises in the domestic and external scenes.

The BB Governor made the comment while attending an IMF seminar on capacity development assistance at Jack Morton Auditorium, George Washington University in Washington DC.

"Capacity Development (CD) assistance in the forms of technical knowhow and training plays a crucial role in bridging the skills gap in forward looking efficient planning and implementation of development initiatives," the BB Governor said.

He said adequate reliable macro and micro sector data and forecasts are also key requisites for the analytical work underpinning efficient planning and implementation of development initiatives.

Increasing external sector openness and integration require that the official statistical agencies collect and disseminate their country data and forecasts in harmonized globally comparable formats. IMF has all along remained forthcoming with CD assistance in these areas for its member countries; and Bangladesh from inception of her IMF membership has remained an avid user of CD assistances organised by the IMF from own resources or with donor support.

Every year, scores of officials from Bangladesh's central bank, fiscal authorities and statistical bureau attend training courses in IMF headquarters and regional centers in interactive multicultural settings on diverse subjects including financial programming, macroeconomic analysis and forecasting; monetary, fiscal, national income and bop statistics and so forth. Bangladesh herself has occasionally hosted some of the IMF's regional training seminars from time to time.

“Knowledge and skills acquired by our officials attending the IMF training courses have in turn been cascaded down to scores of several others, via training courses arranged locally in our own training establishments,” Dr Atiur said.

More recently, IMF CD assistance is also being delivered in the form of modular online courses accessible by trainees at their workplaces and residences. This cost efficient training delivery mode is rapidly gaining popularity as it conveniently minimizes disruptions to normal workflows at workplaces of training recipients.

Besides hosting trainees from Bangladesh in IMF's training courses and seminars, IMF has also been forthcoming in providing Bangladesh from with short and long term resident experts in various fields.

"We at Bangladesh Bank (BB) have benefitted, and still benefitting handsomely from contributions of such expatriate resident experts in our institutional capacity build up in such areas as monetary policy, debt markets development, IAS compliant accounting and IFRS compliant financial reporting, risk based auditing, financial sector regulation and risk based supervision, AML CFT surveillance, and so forth," Dr Atiur said.

Rather than trying to further itemize the CD benefits from the numerous IMF initiatives in diverse areas, let me mention Bangladesh's sustained spell of six plus percent annual average real GDP growth in stable macroeconomic and financial environment for over a decade amid turbulences in the global environment as the best evidence of the benefits we have been receiving through the IMF CD initiatives.

The BB Governor said "I very much look forward to IMF and her donor partners remain forthcoming with CD support and assistance for monetary, fiscal and statistical authorities in Bangladesh. Right now at the BB we can do with more of IMF CD assistance in such areas as survey design, dynamic model based forecasting of key output, price and employment variables, etc."