Transparency surrounding economic or fiscal policies has never been a strong suit of the Bangladeshi government, historically speaking. Indeed, one of the fundamental issues with our tax infrastructure is just how opaque it is, leaving little to no room for the general public to be aware of how their hard earned tax money is being spent by the administration, while the exact justifications for the policies which comprise the yearly national budget are almost never clarified upon.
However, it is undeniable that, despite recent stumbles regarding taxation policies, the interim government has done an admirable enough job in ensuring that whatever policies it has been undertaking when it comes to course-correcting the economy are transparent, while the White Paper Drafting Committee is also starting to shed light on just how a decade and a half of misrule paved the way for economic corruption in Bangladesh.
It stands to reason, then, that for any democratically elected government which would come into power after the interim government’s tenure, ensuring transparency in every facet of our economy is going to be paramount.
Bangladesh is currently reeling from unprecedented levels of inflation and the interim government has clearly inherited an economy which needs severe reforms, as such it needs to sustain the level of transparency it has been providing in terms of policies so as to create a model for future governments to follow.
If the government of the day is unable to lay out clearly defined roadmaps for the economy, it leaves room for the kind of fiscal impropriety which the country underwent during the past 15 years. And with the increasing digitalization of government services, and indeed governance itself, there are next to no excuses for future administrations to keep faltering on this front.
Thursday, June 04, 2026
