Blessing or binding?
The loan agreement signed recently between Bangladesh and India, which entitles the former to receive $1 billion to be funneled through the Exim Bank of India, has raised a debate which threatens to snowball into an impasse. The situation warrants immediate attention and deft handling. The present economic status of Bangladesh, in the assessment of the World Bank, has improved in the recent decades and they are not inclined anymore to consider us a least developed country (LDC).
Have we been able to come to this stage without external assistance and support? In the historical consideration no country has achieved a healthy economy on its own. We have received various types of loans (tied, untied, suppliers' credit etc) from a number of countries, including India, since our independence. As ill luck would have it, we failed to utilise these loans for their promised targets for a variety of reasons, corruption being the prominent one.
Our over-dependence on international donor agencies and development partners in the past to finance our ADP left us with no choice but to often accede to the so-called "benefactor's term." We must confess that these terms were stringent enough to even force us to ramify our development goal. Even now our MDG will be difficult to achieve if we do not receive external assistance.
True that loan agreements are negotiable with regard to terms. International donor agencies give loan at low interest but their loans are directed to their aims, which are mostly capacity building, poverty alleviation and reduction of vulnerability.
Their initiatives often made us accept loans in non-priority sectors, which made us think that beggars could not be choosers (pardon me for feeling so degraded). The reason behind their harsh conditionalities may be their belief that we are incapable of prioritising our development programs and that we are corrupt.
Lately, we have started asking for loans according to our priority. In the past we failed to substantiate our demand because of the lack of accurate data, inadequate managerial expertise and changing political priority.
The changing global geo-political situation has luckily placed us in a position that prompts the loan strategists to focus on fresh initiatives to combat rising militancy, illegal trade of addictive drugs and the need to use our territory for trade and commerce by neighbours, before deciding on the conditionalities of loan to be given to Bangladesh -- a moderate democracy with a much less volatile political situation.
Meanwhile, we have been able to generate internal resources to provide as much as 40% to our ADP fund requirement. Our management skills, infrastructure and democracy have taken root, the inadequacy of which was shown as the sole reason for denying us our rightful share of world funding.
We happily note that FDI has increased considerably, remittances have increased many-fold, the gap in the balance of trade is narrowing and foreign exchange reserve is increasing. This has created a congenial situation for the donors to offer us loan.
Now that Bangladesh has shown the potential of being a medium-sized developing country, we can justifiably pick and choose as to whom to take loan from and seek maximum privilege while negotiating loan deals.
India expressly needs to develop communication with the mineral-rich North-East. Therefore, we should look for more privileges than they are offering.
In view of foregoing, I feel that we should have been more prudent in signing the deal. We should have been apolitical. Yes, there are great advantages that the deal offers. Our people, we should not overlook, are wary of deals with India as our experience of Indian honouring of deals is not quite satisfactory.
Deals with regard to returning of the enclaves, sharing of the river water as a lower-riparian country of the international river system, narrowing of trade imbalance and unabated misdemeanour of BSF are a few examples that created misgivings about India in the minds of the people.
It is claimed that in the scenario of today's global economy, no country should disengage itself from the global responsibility of development of interconnectivity. Some people ask that if China can adopt confidence building measures for the purpose of trade and commerce, if Pakistan can trade with India and if some Arab countries can pursue commerce with Israel, why can't the two geographically contiguous countries do so?
We do want all our neighbours to be equal partners of development with no strings attached. We have to build strategic partnerships with neighbours to emerge as an economic alliance like EEC, Asean etc., so that one country's surplus resources can be utilised by the other neighbouring countries as most favoured nations.
Subjugation fuels insubordination, which is unpalatable for the recipient. Suspicion breeds disbelief even in a right cause. Our friendship with India hangs on Indian earnestness to seek rapprochement by adopting an honest remedial approach, as has been focused in this article.
I urge upon all not to treat this agreement from the political point of view, which does not fit in the global scheme of things. Let us, together, bear upon all future donors not to tie us so badly that we are constrained to feel that they are hatching schemes to subjugate us for their gains.
Bangladesh, thankfully, has crossed the phase when we could be constrained to accept the dictated terms without considering their suitability, and it is time to set the nation free from the shackles of under-development. Therefore, our governments should not contemplate signing unequal deals, especially when there is a psychological barrier.
Comments