The growth of gross domestic product (GDP) spotlighted by the Awami League (AL) government was a bubble as the fascist regime underlined the development stories through data manipulation, according to the White Paper.
The White Paper found the development stories were exceptional from a statistical point of view, but those were deception with the countrymen.
It said the people were fooled by a fictional story of “higher growth” as the White Paper Preparation Committee has found many signs of statistical deceitfulness.
The government formed the committee for the preparation of a comprehensive "White Paper on the State of Bangladesh Economy" led by Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya, Distinguished Fellow at Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD).
The committee submitted its report to the Chief Advisor Professor Muhammad Yunus on December 1, as they prepared the White Paper on the irregularities and corruption during the last 16 years of misrule of the then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina who was ousted by the mass uprising of student and public on August 5 last.
The While Paper mentioned that the high growth rate in Bangladesh during 2010 to 2019 was higher than that of other countries at the same level.
The White Paper preparation committee believed that the GDP rate has been inflated to gain political appreciation, which didn’t match reality. A thorough examination of the data showed that these statistics are incorrect.
Bangladesh achieved high growth during the previous AL government, which has been terming as questionable by the economists for a long time, saying that the growth figures don’t comply with other economic indicators.
Journalists working on economic affairs also raised questions about the growth figures at various times, which also indicated a shadow over the high growth figures.
In the report, the White Paper committee investigated the reasons for the high growth. They said that the GDP growth rate was published without independent review by a third party. It was done only on the basis of government-collected statistics.
Due to the lone dependence on government statistics, it has been seen that Bangladesh's growth rate was very husky even during adverse situations or disasters.
Regarding the manipulation of financial sector statistics, Dr Mohammad Abdur Razzaque, Chairman of non-government research organization Rapid, told BSS, "There were doubts about the calculations of the financial sector statistics including GDP growth, per capita national income, inflation, etc. The statistics have been manipulated and exaggerated for political interests.”
Mentioning that the White Paper preparation committee has exposed this manipulation rightly, he said “The stories of development being uttered by the AL were unrealistic, rather was an illusion.”
Razzaque requested the government to take steps so that real statistics are available from now on.
The White Paper report stated that there were various models for calculating economic growth rates, which have theoretical relationships among various indicators of the economy such as labor, capital, and productivity.
But, these traditional models can’t explain the high growth rate of Bangladesh. As a result, the White Paper Committee believed that there was a systematic bias in collection and analysis of the data.
The linear high growth rate attained during the Covid-19 pandemic can’t be explained by data and methodology. The White Paper Committee opined the reason for this linear high growth is that political figures have increased the growth rate for the sake of domestic and international publicity.
In this case, even after the departure of the most enthusiastic and influential political figure, the influence of her was remained within the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS).
Fearing the anger of the influential section of the country, BBS has consistently published incorrect statistics.
The review of BBS data by the technical committee completely collapsed after 2015.
The white paper committee, using international panel data, showed that the pace of economic growth had slowed down four to five years before the Covid-19 pandemic.
The study didn’t limit itself to the last 16 years but reviewed growth statistics from 1995 to 2019. It showed that during this period, the actual growth rate was consistently lower than the official growth. This trend has only increased over time, which actually meant that the tendency to overstate has increased continuously.
The World Bank has also raised objections from time to time regarding growth statistics. Differences between the data published by the BBS and the data published by the World Bank and the ADB have been continuously increasing.
In 2018, the then Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal, commonly known as Lotus Kamal, engaged into a tussle with the World Bank over a huge difference in growth data.
Lotus Kamal claimed in April that the growth target would be exceeded to 7.65 percent although the country's growth target for the fiscal year 2017-18 was 7.4 percent.
On the other hand, the World Bank had predicted that Bangladesh's growth would be at most 6.65 percent. The ADB also disagreed with the government projection.
It was seen that despite high growth, the tax-GDP ratio didn’t increase. At the same time, when growth is high, investment and revenue income are good, as well as employment.
However, these indicators didn’t match the growth rate.
The White Paper preparation committee found evidence of manipulation not only in GDP growth, but also in other statistics of the financial sector, including per capita national income, inflation.
The then government published these incorrect statistics before the nation for political benefits and international acclaim.
