The committee formed to prepare the White Paper on the state of Bangladesh economy will look into the energy sector loan agreements signed during the Awami League regime.
“If the agreements on foreign loans that were signed over the past years are available, we will evaluate those. We will definitely look into those. Especially, we have thought of looking into the agreements in the energy sector,” Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya told reporters on Tuesday, emerging from the second meeting of the committee held at the Planning Commission.
Dr Debapriya, Distinguished Fellow at Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) and Convener of the Citizen’s Platform for SDGs, Bangladesh, said that at the meeting they have decided which issues specifically will get priority.
“We have identified those matters accordingly. Work has also been distributed among the members of the committee. At the same time, we have decided on the method for preparing this report,” he said.
The renowned economist also mentioned that the committee will look at the available data for formulating the report, adding that they will consider those data and information in a cynical manner.
“We will scrutinise the credibility of the available data as well as compare them with international standards,” he added.
The chair of the committee said that the available researches in these fields will also be considered while preparing their report.
Dr Debapriya mentioned that they will discuss the matters with various stakeholders and experts in sociology, economy and political science at home and consider their opinions.
“We have taken the decision to move forward with our work within the next two months,” he said.
He also said that the topics of the discussions will feature general economy, macro economy as well as sectoral issues like heath, education and energy.
Banking, resource mobilisation, revenue collection, smuggled money, mega projects, poverty alleviation and disparity will also feature in their focus, he said.
Dr Debapriya said that they have planned the preliminary work and within the next three days they will get the initial outlines of their work.
The government has formed the committee for the preparation of a comprehensive White Paper on the state of Bangladesh economy with Dr Debapriya in the chair.