A misconception has been strongly embedded in the minds of blind Awami League supporters that during the 15 years of Sheikh Hasina's autocratic rule, the country had achieved amazing growth. But as a dispassionate development researcher, I would like to inform them that Awami League's economic development has submerged the nation in 18 trillion taka (Tk 18 lakh crore) debt while spinning false narrative of development and creating in unbelievable record of unreined embezzlement and money laundering. Sheikh Hasina sunk the nation in a sea of debt and artificially displayed a high GDP.
During her autocratic rule, Hasina, her family, relations, party leaders and activists, certain oligarch businessmen and embezzlers had institutionalised the looting of billions and billions of taka. Now, after the fall, these shocking tales are unravelling.
According to a lead report of the daily Banik Barta on 7 August 2024, the outstanding total of Bangladesh government's domestic and foreign debt on 5 August 2024 stood at over 18.35 trillion (Tk 18 lakh 35 thousand crore). Yet on 6 January 2009 when Sheikh Hasina took over power, outstanding total of Bangladesh government's domestic and foreign debt stood at around Tk 2.77 trillion (Tk 2 lakh 76 thousand 830 crore).
That means the difference between these two outstanding debts stand at over Tk 15.58 trillion (Tk 15 lakh 58 thousand 206 crore). Before she fled on 5 August, Sheikh Hasina sunk the people in this massive debt of Tk 18.35 trillion, projecting a high GDP rate every year, cheating the people in a despicable manipulation of figures.
The below-poverty level population was depicted lower than actual to inflate the government's success in poverty alleviation. Birth and death rates were also lowered to artificially project the population growth rate.
In January 2025, unknowingly the people of Bangladesh carry a debt of over Tk 100,000 per head. For at least the next one decade the country's economy will be submerged in an alarming state, having to repay this huge debt along with interest. During Sheikh Hasina's rule, on the pretext of accelerating development, one mega project after the other was taken up and implemented, with hundreds and hundreds more development projects taken up in an arbitrarily manner all over the country.
The expenditure of each mega project was magnified much more than actual so that billions of taka could be misappropriated, with project expenditure spirally higher than anywhere else in the world. The last fifteen and a half years was a carnival or corruption and embezzlement in the country.
Hasina's autocratic government has looted the country for over fifteen and a half years and most of the money was siphoned off abroad. At the centre of this looting were the oligarch businessmen, politicians and corrupt civil servants. The project expenditure of 82 ongoing projects in which Sheikh Hasina's relatives are involved in some way or the other, totals over Tk 510 billion (Tk 51 thousand crore). Hasina's family, relatives and oligarch businessmen as well as almost all Awami League ministers, members of parliament, top level leaders and activists and even local level leaders and activists had been in various ways involved in corruption, embezzlement and capital flight.
The massive loans taken in various ways which has sunk the country in long-term debt, is all the more dangerous because the lion's share of this money has been siphoned out of the country. Money laundering has been identified as the number one problem of the Hasina rule.
On 2 November 2023, the executive director of Transparency International Bangladesh TIB) Dr Iftekharuzzaman stated that every year for the last 10 years USD 12 billion to USD 15 billion was siphoned out of the country through various means. According to the White Paper committee findings, over the past fifteen and a half years of the autocrat Hasina's rule, every year USD 16 billion on average was siphoned out of the country, leading to a total of USD 234 billion in capital flight.
Perhaps it will also be possible to reduce inflation in the next two or three months. But it is not clear whether it will be possible to raise the GDP rate to 4 per cent in the current fiscal
The banking and financial sector saw the most embezzlement, then the energy and power sector, followed by the physical infrastructure sector and then IT. The White Paper dug out sector-wise looting and published an estimate in the embezzled funds. It analysed 28 methods of corruption. The United Arab Emirates, Canada, the US, UK, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, India and a few other countries have been identified as places most conducive as tax havens.
On top of that, at the orders of the former planning minister Mustafa Kamal, the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, under the planning ministry, in 2014 became the hub of data doctoring. GDP was project higher than actual every year and the total population of the country was shown to be less than it actually was in order to increase the projected per capital GDP. The country's export income was projected in inflated figures and the rate of inflation projected lower than actual.
The below-poverty level population was depicted lower than actual to inflate the government's success in poverty alleviation. Birth and death rates were also lowered to artificially project the population growth rate. The total fertility rate was also lowered so that the government could claim wide success in controlling population growth control. That is why the export revenue in 2023-24 has dropped by around USD 5 billion as compared to the export revenue projected last fiscal by the former government.
The former government claimed that the population growth rate had fallen by 1.3 per cent, but that is actually much higher. It was said that the rate of population below the poverty lines was down to 18 per cent, but it was actually much higher.
Hasina had taken the economy to the nadir and now the interim government is trying its utmost to ensure that people's quality of life is not totally destroyed. But not even a fraction of the USD 2.34 billion, which has been pilfered out of the country, can be brought back. In the meanwhile, under the leadership of the Bangladesh bank governor, several bold steps have been taken and it has been possible to restore some degree of relief in the banking sector.
Perhaps it will also be possible to reduce inflation in the next two or three months. But it is not clear whether it will be possible to raise the GDP rate to 4 per cent in the current fiscal. Before toppling from power, Hasina's government was claiming that Bangladesh total GDP had crossed USD 450 billion. In the meantime, a foreign research institute has given quite a contrary picture, that Bangladesh's total GDP at present hovers around Tk 300 billion. A researcher Nick Lea claims that Bangladesh's per capita GDP is USD 1794 actually.
*Moinul Islam is an economist and former professor at the economics department of Chittagong University.
* This column appeared in the print and online edition of Prothom Alo and has been rewritten for the English edition by Ayesha Kabir