Good Govt

Abul Maal Abdul Muhith

Minister of Finance of Bangladesh

Bangladesh’s Minister of Finance Abul Maal Abdul Muhith talks to World Report about the country’s huge need for investment in power and infrastructure, and provides an overview of Bangladesh’s economic growth, his published ideas on how to dramatically reduce corruption and his key role in establishing the micro-credit industry in his country.
Bangladesh’s rise in the global GDP growth rankings has been impressive, bout would you say there is anything that has impeded it from even greater growth?

The first one is adequate availability of energy and power, whether it is in the form of electricity or it is other energy sources like gas, coal, whatever it is. This is very important because in my view the growth of the economy has been impeded somewhat by the backwardness in the energy sector. I personally believe that if we had had a better supply of energy resources in 2009, we would have moved to a higher level of economic existence at the moment. We did very well, we are number five in the world in average growth over the four years. Some countries did very well in one year, then went down. We have been very steady. Above us is China, where in these four years there has been an addition of gross domestic product by 40%. The next one is India where the addition is roughly 31%. The next one is Nigeria where the addition has been about 29.5%-30%, then it is Turkey at 28.3%; next is Bangladesh at 25.5%. Now Indonesia has done very well, Myanmar, the same with Vietnam, and Mexico is the same – they have gone up then down so they are not equal to us. But there are a number below us who are between 20% and a little higher, including Australia.

So stability in the power supply is one of the main factors.

Yes, stability is very important. My point however was that we must reach a stage, and I hope that we will do it by 2015, when there will be no energy crisis. Sufficient energy resources will be...