The Committee on the preparation for ‘White Paper on the State of Bangladesh Economy’ would look into the loan agreements signed over the years, especially in the energy sector.
‘If the agreements on foreign loans that were signed over the years are available, then we will evaluate those. We will definitely look in to those. Especially, we have thought of looking into the agreements on energy sector,’ Debapriya Bhattacharya told reporters emerging from the second meeting of the committee that was held at the planning commission Tuesday afternoon.
Debapriya, distinguished fellow at Centre for Policy Dialogue and convener of the citizen’s platform for SDGs, Bangladesh, said that in the meeting they had chosen specifically the issues which would get priority.
‘We have identified those matters accordingly. Allocation of work has also been distributed among the members of the committee. At the same time, we have also decided the method of preparing this report,’ he said.
‘The committee will look after the available data for formulating the report, on the other hand, they will consider those data and information in a cynical manner.’
‘We will also scrutinise the credibility of those available data as well as compare those with international standards,’ he continued.
The chair of the committee said that the available researches in these fields would also be considered while preparing their report. ‘We will also evaluate those and thus try to move forward.’
The eminent economist of the country mentioned that the biggest matter was that they would discuss the matters with various stakeholders and experts in sociology, economy and political science both at home and abroad to take their opinions.
‘We have taken decision to move forward our works within the next two months.’
Debapriya also mentioned that the topics of the discussions would feature general economy, macro economy as well as sectoral issues like heath, education and energy.
‘Banking, resource mobilisation, revenue collection, smuggled money, mega projects, poverty alleviation and disparity will also be there in our focus,’ he said.
He stated that they had planned the preliminary works and within next three days they would get the initial outlines of their works. ‘The main thing is that the committee has already started its works.’
The government has formed the committee for the preparation of a comprehensive ‘White Paper on the State of Bangladesh Economy’ with Debapriya Bhattacharya in chair.