This has been a row over corruptions and economic emancipation here in Bangladesh surpassing many other contemporary issues like human rights and economic development projects. The latest bomb that exploded and touched everyone is the cancellation of funding to the
Padma Bridge by the
World Bank accusing of corruption at the top level of government of Bangladesh.
Time and again World Bank has urged the Bangladesh Government to take necessary actions against it and to rectify it, rather the Government kept on saying no corruptions have so far committed by the Government officials so, no question of rectifications arise.
Problem of the center is definition of corruption. Where the
World Bank consider all the negative or unethical or immoral influence whatsoever to subdue the other contenders of the tenders or deemed to be influencing the parties with intention of corruptions means corruptions, it could go international and not necessarily transaction are occurred. Anyways, the fund of financing the Padma bridge is stopped from World Bank and later followed by other funding agency like Asian Development Bank.
The important points to note here that the bridge needs foreign currency to accomplish the task as the foreign contractors ask the US$. The other point is that the contractors are enlisted with the World Bank and they would not do anything to displease the World Bank. So, foreign currency reserve shortage means you can't go for it, as we need not only foreign currency rather it has to be stocked or reserved beforehand to pay on call as it is not possible to count the interest on over-dues.
The alternative issue is collect funds from other sources, and the other players coming in like Malaysian consortium, some other countries from middle east also shown their interests, but none of these would be cheaper than World Bank.
The Government is now planning to take chances from internal sources, by issuing bonds to foreign residents of Bangladesh, which many experts say an Utopian scheme. Secondly, internal imposition of surcharges on various at source making it more questionable as to why should we participate in the corruption deal when World Bank is accusing it as corrupt. More interestingly, public of Bangladesh don't know what the actual languages and charges of World Bank were, not we not knew who were accused of. Government is hesitating to disclose it in fear of its prestige and positions against the corruption, which they pledged at the time of declaring their last election manifesto.