Concluding Remarks

The study underscores the importance of certain governance dimensions to achieve higher development outcomes. Our results on the performance of Bangladesh for governance dimensions of political governance, institutional governance and ICT dimensions portray an unfavorable situation. Weak governance is not a conducive environment for entrepreneurs for long-term investment. Bangladesh has made improvements during the 1990s in the quality of macroeconomic management in terms of exchange rate stability, reduced inflation and balance of payments position. Improvements in macroeconomic policies and worsening governance are both observed in the Bangladesh economy. There are some governance successes at both macro and micro level: (a) in political governance, holding three successive free elections under caretaker governments, (b) making ban on the use of polythene bags, and (c) reduced cheating in public examinations. From the perspective of the economy as well as investors, the improvement of governance and macroeconomic policies should not be separated. Otherwise, there will remain a risk that the country’s growth may not be increased/ sustained and the poverty problem will remain substantial for decades.

To face the challenge of good governance, Bangladesh needs to formulate and effectively implement its governance policies to improve institutional governance dimension alongside political governance and technology governance dimensions, taking account of higher growth and halving poverty by 2015. The Bangladesh Poverty reduction strategy paper recognizes the challenges of governance weakness across sectors and highlights good governance as a major thrust. The reforms to improve governance need to have strong support from government, civil society, media, industrialist and the local elites.

In 2006, the term of current government expires in October. It is hoped that the two main political parties in Bangladesh will undertake measures to improve the governance performance to attain higher economic growth, and to break the vicious circle of bad governance, economic growth and poverty alleviation. It may start from somewhere in the economy, perhaps in the energy sector where meter readers becomes millionaire in a short span of time.

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