Bangladesh has been one of the great development success stories over the past dozen or so years -- there is no doubting that. In that timespan, we have seen significant increases in our exports, our GDP, our per capita income, and a host of other economic indicators.
Unfortunately, despite these unprecedented achievements and success, we continue to languish in one key area -- successfully completing projects on time, and within the original budget.
While Covid-19 has certainly been a significant factor in delaying many of our mega-projects, it simply cannot be used as an excuse to sidestep an issue that has long since held Bangladesh back from reaching its full potential.
Indeed, if we are to delve deeper, we will see that it is negligence, inefficiency, corruption, and a culture of impunity that continue to be the principal factors for us being unable to complete our projects on time, thus wasting valuable resources and often, tax-payer money.
The time has arrived when we say, enough is enough. If Bangladesh is to be taken seriously as an economy, and if it is to establish itself as a middle-income country and an emerging leader in the region, then it must shed some of its bad habits, of which the failure to complete projects on time ranks high.
Such a failure may have been allowed to pass for an LDC, but will simply drag the image of the country down once it does become a middle-income country, and undermine the stellar progress the country has made in getting to this stage in the first place.
