Despite a lot of bottlenecking, the inclusive development will spread across villages similar to the cities as part of vision 2041 declared by the Prime Minister, he said while attending seminar titled ‘Spreading Equitable Development in the Countryside’ arranged by Asian Development Bank (ADB) at a city hotel.
During his speech, Salman F Rahman, Private Industry and Investment Advisor to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, mentioned that the key requirement to achieve equitable development is the infrastructure development.
“We are working on the development of the road network. We are doing (development) on the rail network and more importantly we are also doing it on the river network,” he said.
He also expressed that the government has formed a new authority for skill development.
“The main purpose of this skill development authority is actually to look at all the skill development syllabus and skill development programs across the country,” he added.
Salman F Rahman further said, “The problem with our banking system is that there is a structural mismatch. We are using short term deposits to finance long-term loans.”
“We really need to look into the access to affordable finance,” he added.
ADB Country Director Manmohan Parkash said although Bangladesh economy has made rapid progress in last 10 years, the higher economic growth may not necessarily be benefitting all regions.
Ralf Schuster, Head of the Bank Non-OECD Countries, Helba, Germany presented the keynote papers on the German approach to equitable development.
KfW Bangladesh Director Anirban Kundu and Mohammadi Group Managing Director Rubana Huq also spoke at the event.