It has been observing since long that at the time ahead of budget preparation the delegation of IFI's visit the country and try to override their agenda in our development planning to swallow their loan packages in the name of development and poverty reduction. This is how the IFI's are exploiting and repatriating resources from the poor countries like Bangladesh, making the country more indebted and dependent. For example, few months back, the IMF advised country’s care taker government to reduce subsidy in agriculture sector and expanding bio-fuel production during 2008-09 fiscal year. Again in October 2008 the same institution advised government to revise its tax policy adopting a parallel rate for all sort of export-import goods; even though such system has never seen as an example in any country. The proposed system of IMF & WB was just to jeopardize country’s revenue earnings and making the country more dependent on IFI's. 

It also observed that the prescriptions of IMF and WB during the care taker government, especially in the preparation of national budget of 2008-09 fiscal year,  increased financial allocations in different unproductive sectors (i.e. Salary, Social Safety Net program without creating of real income opportunity) and reduced development budget. This has resulted increase of government’s borrowing, which is about 40% more than the projection of deficit financing, although already prices of food and fuel has been reduced globally.

Therefore Equity BD urged the newly elected government, who came up with massive public mandate and with the commitment of poverty reduction, need to prepare country’s  national budget giving more emphasis on internal revenue generation, domestic production and employment creation so that government could reduce its dependency on external financial sources to invest in Annual Development Program.  In this relation Equity BD proposes following recommendations in the preparation of MTBF for 2009-11 fiscal year;

Very recently the government has declared country’s monetary policy for January- June 2009 fiscal year. The governor of Bangladesh Bank, in his statement, qualified this monetary policy as effective to control and shrink the credit flow to the unproductive sectors and to rein the inflation. This monetary policy will mandate the commercial banks for CRR (Cash Reserve Requirement) increase, which ultimate will reduce money flow in private sector.

But what are we seeing? The global economic meltdown is affecting country’s economy gradually. Meanwhile, the country is facing export losses in two major export earning sectors like RMG (Ready Made Garments) and Frozen Food. The manpower export has already gone down to half due to decline in oil price in the Middle East countries. In this backdrop, many of country’s mainstream economists are apprehending decline in foreign remittance, which, in turn will affect country’s Balance of Payment system. In this backdrop, we are proposing following initiatives to be taken by the government;

Climate change and its multidimensional impact would a major development change in Bangladesh. The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) clearly mentioned climate change impact in Bangladesh.
The geographic location and geo-morphological conditions of Bangladesh have made the country one of the most vulnerable ones to climate change, particularly to Sea Level Rise. About 10% of the country is hardly 1 meter above the mean sea level (MSL), and one-third is under tidal excursions. Therefore, the climate (and variability) change shall impact all spheres of life and livelihoods of millions in Bangladesh by increasing;

Bangladesh is prone to hazards and 75% of all disasters are originated by weather-climate extremes. The climate (and variability) change are increasing the weather extremes. In 2007 Bangladesh faced two consecutive floods and a cyclone (SIDR) of very high intensity.

It is also predicted that in Bangladesh, production of rice and wheat might have dropped by 8% and 32%, respectively, by the year 2050 due to the effects of climate change. It is estimated that more than 1 million people in Bangladesh will be directly affected by sea level rise in 2050.  It has already been found that the Bay of Bengal was unusually rough in 2007 and the Port Authority issued a total of 83 warnings from January 1 to October 24; a large proportion of those warnings. As the country like Bangladesh is no way responsible for climate crisis so the developed countries should bear the prime responsibilities to support us to cope with and face climate change impact. This is regard UNFCCC and Kyoto protocol asked the developed countries to support poor countries in a just and fair way.    

In this relation, the United Kingdom (UK) Government showed its interest to support Bangladesh in climate change adaptation practices. On 25th March 2008 the first “Bangladesh-UK Climate Change Conference” held in Dhaka to discuss the impacts of climate change and shed light on the current challenges. This conference proposed establishment of a Multi Donor Trust Fund-MDTF to finance climate change adaptation in Bangladesh.

Different donors were expressing an interest to bilaterally finance Bangladesh to address climate change and putting the various monies through a single fund seemed a more efficient mechanism. It was decided to organize another high-level conference in London later fixed for 10th September 2008 wherein modalities and operational structure of the MDTF were discussed. In the London conference the UK government proposed the WB to oversee and manage the fund. Mr.Dr Mirza Azizul Islam, the then finance adviser of the Care Taker government of Bangladesh also accepted WB’s managerial role over the fund.

At that time we strongly protested the involvement of WB in its management, because;

This is to mention that prior to the 2nd Bangladesh-UK climate conference held in London Bangladesh was asked to prepare 'Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan' to present in the conference. The government of Bangladesh hired several consultants (who are also the consultants of the WB and DFID) to prepare this strategy document. Therefore the preparation of this document followed top-down approach, in the preparation process there was no participation/ consultation with the people of geographically vulnerable areas. This strategy document also ignored the issues of mitigation, environmental refugees, forced migration, irresponsible financing etc.; only emphasized on the implementation of several projects mostly related to infrastructure development. The contents as well the preparation methodologies of this strategy document have been strongly criticized by many national and international CSOs, NGOs and proved this document as poorly done.

In relation to the Multi Donor Trust Fund to support climate change adaptation activities, the present government is supporting World Bank involvement in the management of this trust fund. We again protesting the WB involvement in fund management and also protesting the creation of MDTF in a non-transparent way, because it ignores the basic principle of generating climate financing e.g. polluter pay and exploiter pay principle,

The authoritative surrender of the government of Bangladesh to the WB is a testimonial that government is not capable enough to manage this fund or government is selling its freedom and its role of governance to the IFIs. This should not happen is a democratic state, government should reconsider its position and should discuss this matter in the parliament before taking any decision.

We are urging the government to;