Our politicians should show wisdom
Recently the World Bank (WB) said, referring to the studies of McKinsey/USAID, that the productivity of Bangladeshi workers is on par with Chinese workers in well-managed firms with their wages being five times lower than those of their Chinese counterparts.
If Bangladesh can play a proactive role in promoting the investors from China and other countries who are looking for more convenient locations for outsourcing their manufacturing, it would provide Bangladesh the potentiality to capture at least 15 million jobs in the next ten years.
But the hard fact is, recently the WB has revised Bangladesh's growth forecast for fiscal 2012-13 down to 5.8 percent -- way below the government's target 7.2 percent, due mainly to the precarious political situation. Recently in a discussion organised by the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), economists said that the present political unrest might not only compel Bangladesh to miss out on the emerging global opportunities, but also weaken the attained socio-economic achievements of the country.
Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Asian Development Bank (ADB) and global rating agency Moody's have expressed concern about the political turmoil in the country and warned of a lower economic expansion this year. We think it is high time our political leaders showed some political wisdom.
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