STAFF CORRESPONDENT

China’s funding and capital investments under its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) lack accountability, said Ali Riaz, political scientist and distinguished professor at Illinois State University, at a seminar yesterday.

He was speaking at a panel discussion on the regional effects of China’s BRI at a session called “The Dragon’s Domain: BRI after a Decade” at the Bay of Bengal Conversation seminar organised by the Centre for Governance Studies in Dhaka.

Riaz said the investment China is making is destructive in nature, and there is no accountability in its policies.

“The countries who received aid under the BRI have infrastructural development at the core of their development. The massive amount of corruption we have seen in many of these cases has led to crony capitalism,” said Riaz.

Meanwhile, Smruti S Pattanaik, research fellow at Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis in India, argued that the larger share of blame lies with the countries taking the financing and not figuring out how to pay it back.

She said the agreements are not transparent, and people remain unaware of the interest rates, so there is a debate about this debt trap.

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