What are the best and most effective ways and means to utilise properly public money deposited with the national exchequer or in other words to distribute it among the people in a just manner, in tomorrow’s Bangladesh?
Such a question came to the fore at a consultative meeting on ‘public financial management’ organised jointly by the World Bank and the Ministry of Finance in Dhaka recently.
It was said that public money accounts for only 14-15 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) of Bangladesh. Apart from distribution of this money, the government can take measures such as raising or reducing taxes, enhancing or ignoring social security, giving licence or lease, providing opportunity to invest or supply, and announcing suitable monetary policy to make a significant portion of the people rich and offer subsistence to others. If the government decides to offer privilege to certain persons or businesses, it can give them scope to invest or supply goods and services accordingly.
We witnessed the policy of appeasing the people close to the previous party in power as the annual national budget was authored in order to ensure interests of the loyal persons and business groups. We had seen, in the past one and a half decades, how the greedy eyes of the vultures were focused on this ‘small amount’ of budgetary money!
According to rough estimates, public money amounting to US$60 billion has been embezzled in the past 15 years. In addition to this, the country had lost revenue to the tune of another US$60 billion, at least, thanks to financial crimes such as money laundering, smuggling, extortion, bribery, illegal commission, unjust financial concessions and incentives, corruption in government procurement and tax evasion.
All these stolen assets belonged to the people. The total estimated amount (to be equivalent to US$120 billion) would have been enough to pay off the country’s entire accumulated foreign loans.
This further means that the amount each Bangladeshi had lost is equivalent to their per capita foreign debt but some ‘fortunate’ men and women had captured the money, the chunks of which containing no less than Tk hundred and even thousand crore (each crore means 10 million), were perhaps deposited with mysterious bank accounts at home and abroad, used in purchasing properties or given shelter in the houses of thugs.
In newly independent Bangladesh in the early seventies, Mr Sheikh Mujib, the first president, said, "I brought 7.5 crore blankets for the 7.5 crore population. Where is mine?"
Likewise, today’s youth can say in chorus, "Where have our shares of the plundered national resources gone?"
Mujib’s daughter Sheikh Hasina had, without any hesitation, spoken of the scams that took place during the reign of her prime ministership. Her domestic help, too, earned Tk 400 crore!
The moment they were fleeing the Ganabhaban, the former prime minister’s official residence, on 5 August 2024, Sheikh Hasina and her sister Sheikh Rehana had taken away a huge amount of dollars, worth several hundred crore taka, some officials told others.
We also heard that a bureaucrat responsible for the former prime minister’s office managed to earn ill-gotten money amounting to more than Tk 1,000 crore in the first five years of her regime.
Allegations have it that following the fall of Hasina through the July-August revolution, quite a few former ministers, Awami League leaders and police officers had to spend money in a range of Tk 200-600 crore to secure safe exits from the country.
The first and foremost task, of course, is to ensure free flow of accurate information of the public money and thus empower the people. For the whole purpose, what must prevail is democracy
Should we believe that those who paid the money to the once powerful people did so for no benefits of them? Those transactions were not supposed to have taken place in written forms either!
However, when bamboo was used in place of steel in building road infrastructure, it was understood how and in whose pockets this money had gone to. Credit to the ‘Awami-style good governance’, the cost of Padma Bridge project had tripled and that of Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant doubled. Unsurprisingly, the price of electricity imported from Adani’s plant in India became exorbitantly high.
The vicious cycle did not come to an end there. A member of the Sheikh family, who is a lawyer politician, allegedly made money by ‘selling bail’ granted by the court. The extremely clever Awami League administration fearing litigation given the massive corruption committed by its people, had offered indemnity in advance to the former energy adviser to the prime minister.
Dwelling on the Hall-Mark Loan forgery involving more than Tk 4,000 crore, during the initial period of the Hasina rule, the then finance minister, AMA Muhith, said this lost amount was not that high (compared to amounts lost in scams elsewhere). The people got shocked and amused a bit by his words but when many other scams involving much higher amount came to the limelight later on, they realised that the late finance minister did not say anything wrong. He perhaps anticipated that Hall-Mark was just the beginning.
Be it misappropriation of public money or earning money by abusing power, a section of people of different backgrounds were involved in these criminal activities.
They all actually formed only one party which may be called mafia and they had a ‘caring mother’ as well. Not always having the ethos of sophisticated citizens, each of them was the specially privileged member of the oligarchy. They did not also hide their status.
Prior to the farcical elections held in January 2024, media reports showed that a group of businessmen were chanting the slogan: "The government of Sheikh Hasina, is needed time and again." These creatures, some businessmen and their hired executives alike, often bragged that "we the businessmen run the government by paying tax."
As if the job holders and others are not at all taxpayers and the middle and lower middle class people do not pay value added tax which is supposed to be paid by the manufacturers, service providers and sellers.
The surplus (profit) money earned by these groups swell only when consumers of products and services buy them – the relation or process to which they are generally oblivious. Because if say "abracadabra" like that of the gang leader of Ali Baba and 40 Thieves in the Tales of the Arabian Nights, to open the door of the place where stolen assets were kept, the money from the consumers come to their pockets as value addition.
Such people expressed their arrogance by insinuating publicly that it is only they who pay tax and run the government. Their bragging is so similar to Sheikh Hasina’s statement that "I arrange food to 16 crore (people)’!
Thus, they had been successful in turning Bangladesh into an ‘El Dorado’ with permanent arrangement for plundering public resources by depriving the people of their right to vote and elect their leaders!
There was no barrier left to using public resources as forefathers’ properties and distribute them as gifts to whatever Hasina liked during her reign. The results were obvious: massive corruption, limitless plundering and siphoning off of national resources and making the country almost bankrupt.
Decisions to undertake highly expensive projects wherever in Bangladesh were in many cases finalised, not at the ministries of planning and finance or not keeping research organisations and development thinkers informed about the moves. Rather, such decisions were made by mafia ‘guys’ including local and foreign power brokers, businessmen having hobnob with the powerful quarters, ministers, and Awami bureaucrats.
At the World Bank’s consultative meeting, this author was asked what the tasks for authorities concerned and stakeholders are for solving the problems relating to formulation of the budget and its execution, in times of the ongoing reforms and prior to the expected political transition to the elected government.
The first and foremost task, of course, is to ensure free flow of accurate information of the public money and thus empower the people. For the whole purpose, what must prevail is democracy.
To make this process easy and smooth, it is necessary to ensure participation of the common people in the preparation of the budgets of union council, municipalities and city corporations, and upazila (sub-district) and district councils.
In our country, even the genuinely elected members of parliament were not in the past provided with fair opportunity to formulate the budget, their constitutional duty in fact. Also there was a lack of interest and proper knowledge of the subject among them, turning the budget-making process into a bureaucratic exercise.
Since the budgetary money belongs to the people, they must be told in easy, non-technical language how the public money will be and is allocated and spent.
So, potential members of parliament and other politicians should be made aware of the budgetary matters and issues so that the people can get clear ideas about the budget. The members of parliament should be empowered in terms of knowledge for speaking in favour of public interest.
Still, the culture of embezzling public money will continue as a matter of right for the corrupt elements unless the oligarchical system of the Hasina period is defeated and re-emergence of such forces can be stopped.
Through reform initiatives, the people should be incentivised to pay taxes. The private sector needs to be decentralised so that new entrepreneurs can be made. The banking sector should also be reformed. Development that harms environment must be avoided.
These issues are not just of the current administration and its tenure. Reforms cannot be imposed either – they must be homegrown.
For meaningful change, institutions should be built in conformity with local culture, needs and the choice of the people. Bureaucracy should be readied for serving the owners of the republic, the people.
* Khawaza Main Uddin is a journalist.