Staff Reporter :
During the authoritarian regime, the government manipulated data to underline its development narratives, deceiving the public with exaggerated claims of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth, according to the recently released White Paper.
The White Paper, prepared by a committee led by Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya, Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), highlighted widespread statistical irregularities.
The document, titled “White Paper on the State of Bangladesh Economy”, was submitted to Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus on December 1. It focuses on the mismanagement and corruption during the 16-year tenure of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who was removed from power following a mass uprising on August 5.
The report revealed that the claimed high growth rate of 2010-2019, which exceeded that of comparable nations, was inflated to gain political approval and did not align with reality.
The committee’s in-depth analysis found significant discrepancies in the reported figures, attributed to the absence of independent third-party reviews and reliance solely on government-collected statistics.
The committee observed that even during adverse circumstances such as natural disasters or the Covid-19 pandemic, Bangladesh’s reported growth rate remained unusually high. This, they noted, was implausible and indicative of systematic data manipulation.
Dr Mohammad Abdur Razzaque, Chairman of the research organisation RAPID, commented on the findings, stating, “Doubts about financial sector statistics, including GDP growth, per capita income, and inflation, have persisted for years. The statistics were manipulated and exaggerated for political gains.”
He commended the White Paper committee for exposing these inaccuracies, adding, “The development narrative propagated by the Awami League was illusory and far from realistic.”
The report explained that traditional economic growth models, which rely on indicators like labour, capital, and productivity, could not justify the reported growth rates. The committee argued that political motivations led to inflated figures for both domestic and international propaganda.
The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) also came under scrutiny, with allegations of publishing falsified data under pressure from influential political figures. By 2015, the integrity of BBS data reviews by technical committees had collapsed entirely.
The committee’s analysis, which covered the period from 1995 to 2019, showed a consistent pattern of overstated growth rates. The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) frequently raised concerns over discrepancies between government data and their own findings.
For instance, in 2018, then Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal, also known as Lotus Kamal, claimed that the growth rate for the fiscal year 2017-18 would exceed 7.65 per cent, even though the official target was 7.4 per cent. In contrast, the World Bank predicted a maximum growth rate of 6.65 per cent, with the ADB offering similar estimates.
The White Paper committee concluded that these exaggerated figures misled both the domestic population and the international community, necessitating urgent reforms to ensure transparency and credibility in Bangladesh’s economic reporting.
