Commerce minister Tofail Ahmed on Tuesday came down heavily on the Centre for Policy Dialogue for its latest statement in which CPD distinguished fellow Debapriya Bhattacharya had said that Bangladesh needed at least 10 more years for coming out from the list of least developed countries. At a press briefing at his secretariat office, he severely criticised Debapriya without mentioning his name and said that he made the comment to tarnish the image of Bangladesh abroad.
He was talking to reporters after a meeting with newly appointed EU ambassador and head of EU delegation to Bangladesh, Pierre Mayaudon, who was also present at the briefing.
CPD and its economist made some negative statement at a time when everybody including Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen and institutions including World Bank and Goldman Sachs from around the world were praising Bangladesh for its outstanding performance in socio-economic indicators.
‘Is he (Debapriya) a superior economist than Amartya Sen?’ he asked.
Debapriya on last Thursday, analysing the latest report of United Nations Conference on Trade and Development on LDCs, said that Bangladesh would need at least another decade to graduate from LDCs list as it lagged behind in human asset and economic vulnerability indexes.
‘Everyone is talking very high about Bangladesh, but only CPD does not like it,’ he said, accusing that the research organisation always sees the half-empty glass in case of the question whether the glass half-full or half-empty.
‘I talked with him (Debapriya) to protest his comment and said you see only negative side of a matter,’ Tofail said.
Bangladesh will obviously come out from the LDCs list by 2021 as it has already progressed much in this connection, he said.
So, the statement of CPD and its economist is not correct at all, he said.
-With New Age input
