A BUILDING is more than a structure of cement and steel; it is a declaration of intent, a statement about how a nation imagines its progress. In Sri Lanka, where economic ruin forced self-reflection, the government recently identified nearly 3,000 unused, half-constructed, or abandoned government buildings. Each of those idle walls was once a promise made to the people, now resurrected into a plan for national recovery. Ministries there have been directed to repurpose or lease out those properties, an exercise in accountability guided by both necessity and reason. For a country that defaulted on its foreign debt in 2022, this is not just an austerity measure but a rare example of political maturity: the humility to correct course.
Bangladesh, however, stands before a mirror it has not yet dared to look into. Across the country, government-built housing, offices, hospitals, schools, and training centres stand lifeless, silent witnesses to a state鈥檚 failure to connect investment with utility. Some were inaugurated with fanfare, others announced in budget speeches, yet many now serve only the crows and the creeping weeds. The question is no longer whether these structures exist, but why they remain neglected when the nation is gasping for resources.
Over the past fifteen years, Bangladesh鈥檚 development narrative has prioritised concrete outcomes over ethical considerations. According to the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division, nearly one in every six public development projects fails to meet its functional objectives within five years of completion. The phenomenon of 鈥榳hite elephant projects鈥�, massive, expensive ventures that yield little social or economic return, has become disturbingly common. They range from empty government housing blocks to idle training centres and underused hospitals, all built with taxpayers鈥� money.
Take Mirpur in the capital as a microcosm. In the Shialbari and wood factory areas alone, eleven multi-storey government housing buildings, each rising fourteen floors, stand largely unoccupied. Built for deputy secretaries and other mid-level officials, these flats have been vacant for years, their walls gathering dust rather than lives. The state invested crores in these projects, but the intended residents have refused to move in, citing inconvenience or poor location. A few kilometres away, the same pattern repeats in Narayanganj鈥檚 Aliganj, where six 15-storey government buildings constructed at a cost exceeding Tk 400 crore have remained empty for six years. The rent-free flats are ready, yet the tenants are missing.
The irony is difficult to ignore. In Dhaka, where the housing crisis is acute and land prices are among the highest in South Asia, state-built flats rot in neglect. Meanwhile, private developers continue to fill every inch of available land with high-rise towers, capitalising on unmet demand. The contradiction exposes a deeper flaw in planning, not merely technical but philosophical. Development has been mistaken for construction, and governance for spending.
The numbers tell a story of misplaced priorities. Bangladesh spends roughly 2.5 per cent of its GDP annually on public infrastructure. But according to the World Bank鈥檚 latest assessment, the efficiency of that spending, the ratio between investment and output, is among the lowest in the region. A significant portion of public assets is either underutilised or poorly maintained, leading to what economists call 鈥榗apital erosion鈥�. Once a building is left unused for a prolonged period, the cost of reviving it multiplies. Cracks deepen, fittings corrode, and bureaucratic inertia hardens into permanence.
In contrast, Sri Lanka鈥檚 approach, driven in part by IMF-imposed fiscal discipline, treats every idle building as recoverable capital. The government there has directed ministries to either occupy, repurpose, or lease these structures. This shift recognises infrastructure not as a static asset but as a living component of economic management. Even a rented-out government building generates returns and reduces maintenance burdens. It also restores a sense of stewardship over public property, something that Bangladesh has sorely lacked.
In Bangladesh, no comprehensive inventory exists of how many government buildings lie unused. Ministries maintain their own fragmented lists, if any. The ministry of housing and public works knows of hundreds of vacant flats under its jurisdiction but lacks the authority or initiative to repurpose them across sectors. The Local Government Engineering Department, the Roads and Highways Department, and other agencies sit atop countless idle facilities, including warehouses, rest houses, and offices built for projects long completed. Even educational institutions and health complexes, built under different ministries, remain shuttered due to staffing shortages or bureaucratic delays. The result is a quiet epidemic of underutilisation.
Part of the problem lies in the political economy of projects. Construction has long been one of the most politically lucrative sectors in Bangladesh. From land acquisition to tender allocation, it feeds a network of patronage that rewards building rather than maintaining. A new structure can be inaugurated and photographed, while a maintenance plan cannot. Bureaucrats prefer new budgets; contractors prefer new contracts. Once completed, projects are quickly abandoned to the wilderness of official indifference. Thus, while the skyline changes, the social landscape stagnates.
The cost of such inefficiency is staggering. According to an IMED review, delayed or underused projects collectively waste an estimated Tk 20,000 crore annually in opportunity cost. That amount could fund hundreds of community clinics or rehabilitate decaying educational institutions. Yet because accountability mechanisms are weak, the waste continues quietly, hidden beneath the celebratory narrative of 鈥榙evelopment success鈥�.
The irony deepens when one considers that Bangladesh鈥檚 debt service obligations are climbing sharply. In the 2024鈥�25 fiscal year, the government is expected to spend more than Tk 1.1 trillion on debt repayment, triple the amount a decade ago. Every unused government building, therefore, represents not only administrative negligence but also a moral failure. Citizens are paying interest on borrowed money that built nothing of use.
It is not too late for course correction. The interim government could begin, as Sri Lanka did, by ordering a national audit of unused or dilapidated public assets. Every ministry could be tasked with reporting the number, type, and condition of its idle infrastructure within a defined time frame. A central agency, perhaps under the finance or planning ministry, could then categorise them for reactivation, leasing, or disposal. Technology could simplify the process. A digital registry of government assets, accessible to all ministries and open to public scrutiny, would inject transparency into a domain long shrouded in opacity.
Repurposing need not mean privatisation. A closed technical training centre could host community programmes or vocational courses. A disused office building could be converted into student hostels. Abandoned rural facilities could be leased to NGOs or startups under strict accountability terms. The point is to revive the dead capital locked within walls that once embodied public ambition.
More fundamentally, Bangladesh needs to rethink what 鈥榙evelopment鈥� means. The obsession with quantity 鈥� how many roads built, how many bridges inaugurated 鈥� has overshadowed the quality of governance. Sustainable development is not the sum of projects completed but the measure of public benefit derived. Unless planning becomes demand-driven rather than donor-driven, the country risks turning into a museum of half-finished dreams.
Reactivating idle assets may not make headlines, but it would signal something rarer than ribbon-cuttings: a commitment to reason, efficiency, and respect for public money. It would mark a shift from the vanity of construction to the virtue of utilisation. The real test of progress, after all, is not how much a nation builds but how wisely it uses what it has already built.
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听HM Nazmul Alam is an academic, journalist and political analyst based in Dhaka and is teaching at IUBAT.
