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Rule of law key to achieving MDGs

Wahiduddin Mahmud tells roundtable

STAR BUSINESS REPORT
Bangladesh needs to establish rule of law if it wants to achieve Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, a development prescription by United Nations, said economist Wahiduddin Mahmud yesterday.
The rule of law is very important to ensure basic human rights as well as poverty reduction, but the strategy to achieve MDGs has bypassed the issue, he said.
"Unfortunately, I did not find anything about the rule of law in MDGs," he said at a roundtable titled "Millenium Development Goals, PRSP and Mass Initiative." The Hunger Project, Bangladesh, organised the roundtable at the Jatiya Press Club in Dhaka.
In the last 15 years, Bangladesh achieved much improvement in the issues such as population control, child mortality and women education, Mahmud said adding, "But we will face difficulties to sustain these achievements after some years if we fail to establish rule of law in the country."
"The donor agencies have prescribed MDGs or PRSP. It is not our homegrown prescription. The prescription of the donor agencies will be more beneficial if they do not impose any condition," said Mahmud.
Kazi Kholiquzzaman, president of Bangladesh Economic Association (BEA), and Khondokar Ibrahim Khaled, managing director of Pubali Bank, also spoke at the roundtable moderated by economist Dr Mozaffar Ahmed.
Prof Badiul Alam Majumdar, country director of Hunger Project, Bangladesh, presented a keynote paper.
Kholiquzzaman said it is impossible to achieve MDGs by 2015 as the developed countries did not give financial assistance mentioned in MDGs.
According to the UN statistics, although Bangladesh needed $74 billion to implement MDGs projects, the country got only $60 million from the developed nations in 2005, he added.
In this age of market economy, he said, the developed nations will not always maintain the flow of financial assistance to the developing countries.
"So, we have to use our own resources. We should strengthen the local government by giving it much autonomy to achieve MDGs," the BEA president felt.
The government said it allocated 54 percent of the total budget for the country's poverty reduction. But it does not say how and where the allocations will be expended, he said.
The common people do not understand terms such as MDGs or PRSP. The local government bodies have a vital role to give them a comprehensive idea about these development strategies and act accordingly, said Ibrahim Khaled.
Mozaffar Ahmed said the disparity of income between the rich and the poor is increasing day by day and is obstructing the progress of poverty reduction.