Plug the avenues of money laundering

Global Financial Integrity (GFI) brought out a report recently that provides country-level estimates of the illicit flows of money into and out of 148 developing and emerging countries and is based on International Monetary Fund (IMF) data. The latest GFI index in its report tells us that in 2015 Bangladesh has experienced a siphoning out of USD 5.9 billion through trade misinvoicing. According to the report, "trade misinvoicing remains an obstacle to achieving sustainable and equitable growth in the developing world" and Bangladesh is one of the top 30 countries in terms of illicit financial flows (IFFs).

Money laundering remains a major pain in countries like ours as it has everything to do with tax evasion and smuggling of monies across transnational borders with no oversight. These illegal activities are a major threat to the country's economic development as the government finds it increasingly difficult to deliver sustainable growth in the face of diminishing resources for economic activities like building infrastructure. To put things in perspective, we could have built nearly two Padma bridges with the money siphoned off!

The government must strengthen its anti-money laundering regulations and we are told that the central bank is working on a policy titled "National Strategy for Preventing Money Laundering and Combating Financing Terrorism 2018-2020". The plan looks good on paper, but the strategy paper will take till 2020 to prepare. We would like to impress upon the concerned ministry and relevant departments that the quicker we formulate the plan, the sooner it will provide a roadmap to combat IFFs. There are also serious implications in a world of unknown financial inflows which could potentially be used to destabilise the country. The cost of delayed action is running into billions of dollars and Bangladesh is being flagged yearly by reports like the GFI index, which hardly inspires confidence in the policymakers' efforts to curb illicit financial flows not just outward, but also inwards.