Civil society termed BDF the donor’s conspiracy
of making the country more indebted
Donors are hardly reliable
Declare road map of five year planning

Dhaka, 11th February 2010: EquityBD, a network of right based CSOs, organized a seminar titled “ PRS II : Sovereign Development Planning” in Dhaka Reporters Unity where they termed the upcoming Bangladesh Development Forum as the ‘Debt Development Forum’ which in fact is the planning of making the country more indebted. EquityBD urged the government to drop the donor driven Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) process and urged to declare a participatory road map for the preparation of next five year plan by 2010-2011.

Syed Aminul in his paper mentioned that the PRS framework included the basic conditionality of the donors, especially of the World Bank i.e., import liberalization, blanket privatization and commercialization of the public service sector, including the agriculture sector. These conditionalities will hinder growth of local industry and employment generation and thus will reproduce poverty. He also mentioned that the debt servicing liabilities of Bangladesh now stands to 20 % of revenue budget i.e., per year $ 2250 million, which has already surpassed annual health and education budget.Given this context, the group presented a charter on Sovereign Democratic and Responsible Finance.

The group also put forward four major demand in relation to sovereign development, these are (i) local resource mobilization as donors are hardly reliable, (ii) declaration of participatory road map for the preparation of next five year plan by 2010 – 2011, (iii) immediate decentralization of administration and introduction of autonomous local government.

Ex minister Abul Hasan Chowdhury mentioned local government and grass root democracy is the only way of country’s own local resource mobilization. Ziaul Haque Mutka said that forming Local Consultative Group to oversee and guide different ministries of the government of Bangladesh is the clear violation of diplomatic code of conduct as stated in the Vienna Convention. Ex minister KM Zahangir Hossain mentioned, in fact civil bureaucrats do not want members of parliaments to participate in PRS preparation. He mentioned that there is no alternative other then giving importance to railway and river route. Ex minister Abdul Mannan mentioned that in fact there are differences in what is in rhetoric and in fact policy outlines, the government must have to be sincere in agriculture development.

Rezaul Karim Chowdhury, Convener EquityBD, moderated the seminar, while Syed Aminul Haque made the key note presentation. Md. Shamsuddoha, Mostafa Kamal Akanda and Dr. Sohel Iqbal of the group also spoke on the subject matter.

Please dowmload all related file of the papers presented in the seminarl

(i) PRS II : step in as usual business [ English ]
(ii) sovereign democratic responsible financing charter, [ Bangla ] [ English ]
(iii) vision 2021 vs. debt dependent second PRS [ Bangla ] [ English]
(iv) Critical review of sector wise policy matrix [Bangla ] [English ] ,
(V) photos and media coverage.

Online Media coverage: