Bangladesh starts economic clean-up after Sheikh Hasina's exit
Bangladesh will examine data anomalies that allegedly inflated economic performance during former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s regime, in an effort to stamp out corruption that plagued the South Asian nation for most of the past 15 years.
The country’s interim government has asked Debapriya Bhattacharya, an economist and public policy analyst, to produce a “white paper” documenting mismanagement under Hasina’s rule. Bhattacharya has 90 days to write the paper and plans to submit an initial report to Nobel-winning banker Muhammad Yunus, who’s leading Bangladesh’s temporary administration.
“We have a serious problem with data,” Bhattacharya, 68, said in an interview in Dhaka on Saturday. “Data were manufactured. Data were suppressed. I call that data anarchy.”
From a distance, Bangladesh was widely perceived as an economic success story, propelled by the world’s second-largest garment exports industry. But Bhattacharya said Hasina’s administration likely released inaccurate data on exports, inflation and gross domestic product, creating “unprecedented economic vulnerabilities.”
Hasina, who resigned and fled to India this month in the face of mass protests, left behind 18.36 trillion taka ($153 billion) of local and foreign debt as of December. That’s equal to the national budget for three fiscal years.
Bhattacharya identified three key setbacks for Bangladesh: macroeconomic instability, inflation and a dearth of foreign exchange reserves. Stability was disrupted over the last couple of years and Hasina blamed
