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'Confrontational politics hurdle to erasing poverty'

STAFF CORRESPONDENT
The law-and-order slide in Bangladesh is bred by confrontational politics and is the biggest hurdle to investment, the key tool in the fight against poverty, Cabinet Secretary Dr Saadat Husain told a roundtable yesterday
"All members of parliament want strict enforcement of law as long as it does not hurt them or their party colleagues. But it is not possible to apply law selectively," said Husain, who was home secretary twice under the present and past government.
The roundtable, Governance Issues and Political Economy of Reforms, was the last session of a two-day seminar on 'Accelerating Growth and Poverty Reduction in Bangladesh' that ended yesterday.
The seminar was organised by the Bureau of Economic Research (BER) of Dhaka University, the South Asia Region of the World Bank and the World Bank Institute at Hotel Sheraton in Dhaka.
Prof Nurul Islam, emeritus fellow of the International Food Policy Research Institute at Washington, Prof AR Khan of the University of California, Prof Rehman Sobhan, chairman of the Centre for Policy Dialogue, Professor Muhammad Yunus, managing director of the Grameen Bank, Frederick T Temple, World Bank country director in Dhaka and Mahfuz Anam, editor of The Daily Star, took part in the discussion as panelists.
Prof Wahiduddin Mahmud, chairman of BER and Sadiq Ahmed, World Bank chief economist and sector director for South Asia, made the closing remarks.
Prof Sobhan said the successive governments did not have a coherent policy for divesting the state-owned enterprises.
Citing example of the recently closed down Adamjee Jute Mills, he said it made 30,000 people jobless and put the whole community in the doldrums.
Prof Sobhan said the government did not take any step for rapid replacement of such closed or divested industries.
Referring to poor value addition industries like cement factories and
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readymade garment, he said the future of the RMG sector was uncertain after 2004.
Prof Yunus said rural areas were totally credit starved. He stressed the need for formulating a legal framework so that credit facility could easily be extended to the rural areas.
"We need a microcredit regulator for monitoring purpose. The body should be independent as the central bank is not the body to do it and people involved in microcredit should be included in the body."
Prof Nurul Islam said Bangladesh went on with the trade liberalisation half-heartedly.
"We are a reluctant trade liberaliser. The rule of origin is competitive and it has made us so weak," he said, adding that the readymade garment sector did not grow due to trade liberalisation.
It grew under a highly discriminatory system of the importing countries, he added.
Professor AR Khan said if increasing inequality were allowed problem of poverty reduction would become critical.
Citing the examples of South Korea and Taiwan, he said they grew with minimum inequality while China, India as well as other South Asian nations were growing with rising inequality.
Mahfuz Anam said there was
no check and balance within the political parties and the party chiefs enjoy unquestioned power.
"Our constitution gives enormous power to the executive branch, without due check and balance. Due to the repeated boycotts, parliament cannot exert the type of check on the executive as the constitution envisages," he added.
Sadiq Ahmed said long-term growth was the only sustainable way for reducing poverty. "Don't worry about increasing inequality. If it is possible to ensure longterm growth, that will reduce poverty."