‘Foreign consultant-depend projects must end’

Staff reporter :

Bangladesh has long relied on a flawed approach of taking excessive loans from development partners and hiring foreign consultants for projects, resulting in unnecessarily high costs, Planning Adviser Dr Wahiduddin Mahmud said on Monday.

Speaking at a press conference after the Ecnec meeting at the NEC Conference Room in Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, he noted that many projects could have been executed at lower costs based on actual needs, but foreign consultancy often inflated expenses without adding real value.

“Foreign consultants come, occupy our offices, enjoy hospitality, stay for four years, and then leave without meaningful contributions,” he said. “We need to move away from these foreign consultant-dependent projects.”

While acknowledging that foreign expertise is necessary in areas like technology upgrading, advanced garment technologies, export diversification, microchip production, and assembly industries, Wahiduddin pointed out that top-tier international consultants are expensive and largely unavailable, as they hold major positions abroad.

“As a result, we mostly get consultants with limited opportunities in their own countries, focusing on soft social issues rather than technical or industrial development,” he said.
“They advise on marginal improvements in everyday matters, child marriage, or social initiatives—adding little to hard economic or industrial outcomes. This has been the trend for years.”

The planning adviser emphasized the need to prioritize local capacity and expertise for development projects while selectively engaging foreign consultants where high-level technical knowledge is genuinely required.