 Okay, good afternoon from Helsinki and welcome to this UNU wider webinar. My name is Rachel Gisselquist. I'm a senior research fellow here, and I'm really pleased to chair this session. Today our focus is the political economy of development of Bangladesh and how the example of the Bangladesh development story may shed light on ways to overcome vulnerabilities elsewhere. Bangladesh gained independence just over 50 years ago in 1971. It was a nation emerging from war and it was one of the very poorest countries in the world. And today it's classified as a lower middle income country by the World Bank. It's one of the world's fastest growing economies, and it's been praised for its record on poverty reduction gender equality nutrition girls education maternal and infant mortality. There are a number of challenges in its journey, and we'll consider some of those today and how these lessons might be relevant for some other countries. So in this wider webinar, we will welcome first Dr ks merchant was a development economist and the immediate past director, director general at the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies in Dhaka. He has published several books and numerous articles. His core areas of work are agrarian markets and food policy, but he's also published widely in other areas. And in particular, I would spotlight his soon to be published book coming out in June 2022. Next month, with Cambridge University Press, entitled the odds revisited the political economy of the development of Bangladesh, and we will hear more in his presentation. The next speaker will be Dr Darlene Mutalemma, who is a full time senior lecturer researcher and consultant at Mozambique University Dar es Salaam campus college Tanzania since 2010. For the past 20 years she's worked extensively in the fields of small and medium enterprise development, development policy, private sector development, diaspora national development and development aid and HR development. And she will consider in in her comments lessons for other countries. And I think in particular Tanzania. So without further ado, I'd like to move on to the presentations. Our speakers will present one after the other and they'll talk for, I think, together about 40 minutes and then we'll have a good 2015 20 minutes for questions. So please do think about your questions, questions that you'd like to raise for our speakers, and feel free to put those questions in the chat function or the question box at the bottom of your screen throughout the presentation. And as time permits, I will try to unmute a few of you to ask your questions but I will also try to ask as many of your questions as I can. So let's turn over to merchant, please. You have the floor. Thank you Rachel, and thank you for the introduction. And I should also thank wider, and it's director, Professor for inviting me to make this presentation. So it was of course a pleasure for me to talk about Bangladesh. And I value this opportunity to do this, particularly before this audience. Now, as you know that Bangladesh has attracted a bit of attention in recent years for a number of reasons. The international donor agencies generally have been kind of relieved that the bad news from Bangladesh appear to have now diminished and now receiving good news on a number of fronts, particularly in the social sectors. But also because it was an element of surprise. And in fact, people have said that the Bangladesh story is a paradox deserves to be understood better. And, and some even have said that it is a miracle. So various epithets I've actually been used to describe Bangladesh's development. But what in my view seem to have been missing was that while there have been fragmented and sectoral analysis of particular aspects of Bangladesh's development. For example, women, gender, the ready made garments industry micro credit. These have received a lot of attention. But what we seem to be missing here as a more holistic and a comprehensive treatment of the underlying dynamics that actually led to these outcomes. So I will be trying to elude to my presentation but because I only have about 20 minutes understand. I will basically be only in a position to share with you and overview of Bangladesh's development processes. And as I do that, I will draw attention to some of the underlying policy dynamics as well. And then start. First of all, you know this business of, you know, the Bangladesh surprise, the Bangladesh paradox, and the different senses in which the paradox has been have been used. I think the element of surprise essentially relates to the fact that Bangladesh when it emerged out of its semi colonial conditions 1971. The colonial conditions were really, really rough. And apart from the usual stories of, you know, destruction and ravages of war, the destruction of infrastructure. The large number of refugees that needed to be resettled and rehabilitated the internally displaced persons, large numbers of casualties. This is the usual sort of post war conflict. Situation scenario, but even apart from that, the condition of Bangladesh was that was an extremely poor country to start with you know some 80% of the people were below the poverty line. And the economy was in a way very simple was largely dominated by agriculture and within agriculture rice and dominated everything else. So, the entire economy was actually dependent on monsoon agriculture. So, which basically meant that the welfare year to year and season to season of its people dependent on the reins, and both how much as well as how little. So, that was basically the situation that level of industrialization is very low maybe about 5%. So, these were the initial conditions and on top of that you had severe political instability assassination of the founding father and ideological conflict. And the global situation was also hostile. So all these together. I think created a condition in which the expectation for Bangladesh all around extremely negative. And therefore when Bangladesh actually began to overcome these people began to be surprised or felt that well how could this happen because you know we have such widespread poverty and such poor governance and high level of corruption, low public expenditures. How are these outcomes, then possible so this was then leveled as a surprise or a paradox or a miracle. So, let me start by trying to conceptualize the development dynamics underlying Bangladesh is developing other. The most important thing, I would say was that that the Malthusian challenge that Bangladesh faced with regard to food and population, growth rate was over 3%. And productivity in agriculture and food was very, very low. And there was obviously these Malthusian fears that fed into Bangladesh is policymaking and generally shared by everybody else. So, that was actually the first area that the government supported by the donors set out to do something about. And this figures is very prominent in the first five year plan, for example. So this was actually the major challenge. And I think Bangladesh a success with the green revolution, first of all. And secondly, its ability to oversee rapid fertility decline. These were the two factors that created or created the enabling conditions upon which everything else could then be could follow. These were the basic two foundations. Now, I should mention that, you know, these were not easy challenges to address the green revolution to 30, 30 years or so to, to actually bring about. It was a very hard struggle. It was very hard to get there, and there were many mistakes made, but in the end, once the incentives are set in, set in properly, once the policies were fine tuned, it took off with fertility decline. Again, there was a bit of a paradox there as well, because the conventional wisdom was that in a in a country which was traditional very poor, low levels of literacy, the impact of tradition, an adverse power structure, exploitation by large farmers and semi feudal elements, Islam and tradition, all these together meant and the low status of women meant that, you know, the adoption of population control technology would be extremely poor. But once this technology was made available. I think in women poor, whether rural or urban poor or rich in the respective of class or religion, you know, came forward and adopted adopted family control policies or techniques spontaneously and this kind of caused a lot of consternation amongst development and policies and policy makers, but that was a good thing. So these were the two basic foundations upon which, you know, the Bangladesh economy was able to then move forward. Now in parallel, other developments emerged, although the green revolution and fertility these were led, you know, these strategies were led by the government and paid very generously I must say by the donors. These were the developments that occurred either by chance, or by what I would say was the action of actor heroes or champions. In fact, you know, you could think of them as the phrase that picket to use a switching points where, you know, individual champions could change So, for example, in the in the labor exports opportunities that opened up in the late 70s early 80s. You know this happens spontaneously and was entirely private sector led and you know the role of the government came much later, which was a supportive role. But basically it was driven by the private private sector now RMG industry I mean that to has has emerged as a result of private sector initiative by chance of currencies in the global environment, but deeply supported by the government. So, but these two outcomes, you know the success with labor exports and remittances and success with cheap labor exports in the form of ready made garments. And these were two additional pillars of Bangladesh's development because what it did was it altered the availability of foreign exchange and foreign resource research for the Bangladesh economy, which was of course, something that Bangladesh was entirely in need of. These were basically the initial impetus in terms of development dynamics in the late 70s, 80s up to the 90s. Another element that I want to mention is the farmers and development of the pharmaceutical industry. Again, this was the product of champion in the form of an NGO leader who was able to persuade the then government to enact the national drug policy, which allowed Bangladesh firms to copy generic drugs for the market. And although this is stiff resisted by the multinational pharmaceuticals in the country at the time. This was followed through the law was enacted, and this enabled the rather formative stages of the Bangladesh pharmaceutical industry to really expand and grow very very quickly. So, again, something that was very unexpected, but occurred by chance and through individual action later on supported by the government. So, there are various kinds of policy dynamics that one can detect here already. Now, what the Green Revolution also did was because of its role in the rural economy, it not only had an impact on the microeconomy and the household level in terms of incomes consumption savings. But also the macroeconomy because it had macroeconomic impacts on inflation on foreign exchange reserves. At the same time, it allowed the rural non farm sector to grow rapidly. And in fact, one of the latest successes of Bangladesh has been the growth of the rural non farm economy, especially in aquaculture which has been designated as a blue revolution, and in poetry. So, these are the spin offs from the basic foundational developments that what can think of immediately. Now, coming back to the social sector outcomes. I took a bit of time to come to it, although the social sector outcomes have been the most commented upon internationally. The social outcomes come in a packet. I think these dynamics have to actually be viewed together to understand what the overall outcomes have been. Now, the social outcomes were generated or engendered by NGOs. And again, once again, individual actor champions. The key driving elements here. Later on, again generously supported by donor engagement, and by the state. But I think in the 80s 70s 80s 90s, there was a historical moment, historical opportunity where the NGO movement could actually find space to expand and develop and innovate. Which may not always may not be easy for other countries to replicate because I think at that time, the state was weak at least in the rural areas, and the NGOs were active in the rural areas there was very little else going on there. And therefore, I think the state either deliberately or implicitly allowed the space to be contained by NGOs, at least for for a few decades. The mediating rules, of course, the policy there are kinds of policies that needed to support all these outcomes. And these policies were in some cases initiated by the government but in most cases I think that once the developments were in almost in evidence or championed by powerful individual champions and actors, the government then came along and said, okay, we will support this. And I think this really has been the story in Bangladesh. The role of the market is of course extremely important. Now, to start with, I think Bangladesh was lucky that its agrarian markets actually worked well, even the earliest times, the markets work efficiently worked well. But of course, over time, as the infrastructure improved the advent of a better rules mobile phones and technology as much as we can even much more efficient. And also allowed the development of entrepreneurship. Now, entrepreneurship story is complicated. Bangladesh had a very, very small entrepreneurial class basically it was a mercantile class, but a new entrepreneurial class as emerging over the 30 or 40 years of Bangladesh. And I think it was an extremely significant outcome which has not really been studied very much. I have a chapter of this on the book I don't think I'll have time to talk about this in this presentation, but with hindsight, what we can see is because identify obviously synergies linkages complementarities, all of which across sectors and across cross cutting outcomes, all of these combined to development to deliver excellent development outcomes. Now I will not I've already talked about the initial conditions. And so I will not talk very much about that right now. But I would like to mention one particular element that I've talked about space. Now, I think this is again not really discussed very much in the literature. But Bangladesh I think has been in a unique position that after 1947, when it became free of its colonial masters and became an independent country as part of Pakistan. One thing that happened was at once true, it was able to get rid of the feudal Zamindari system that dominated Bangladesh's agriculture. Now, so, and mainly because most of the Zamindars the feudal landlords were Hindu, and with the emergence of Pakistan is Pakistan for Bangladesh and that at that time, most Hindus left the country so this vacuum was created. And this basically left the rural economy free of feudal constraint. And if we look back again to 1971 when Bangladesh was able to free itself from semi colonial rule. Again, new spaces were created because the power structure was non indigenous, and also the mercantile and trading sectors and business sectors they're dominated by non indigenous people. They also left, and this created I think space for an indigenous capitalist sector to develop in Bangladesh and this I'm sure this may be a little controversial. But the fact is that of course this is not the only way you can create space space can be created through policies through all kinds of mechanisms, but in Bangladesh's case. This, I think, is a basic precondition that we found. And I think Bangladesh benefited from that. Now, so what I will do now I don't know how much more time I have this check. Probably not what five or 10 minutes. It's about seven minutes or so seven minutes while what I will try to do quickly very very quickly is to provide a broad overview of Bangladesh's development outcomes so Bangladesh became a low middle income in 2015, I think, or 14, and it was on track to graduate out of LBCs by 2024 but this has now been deferred because of COVID. Now the GDP per capita in 2020 was $1626 in 2015 prices. It was $463 in 1972, again in constant 2015 prices. So this is about four times the 72 level, but of course in nominal terms, this is much more from $94 to about around $2,000 today. Now Bangladesh has set itself very ambitious targets to become an upper middle income country by 2031 and a high income country by 2041 and very ambitious targets, but one never knows Bangladesh is a miracle country after all. Okay, the growth. Now, I think one of the main characteristics of the growth process is stability. One sees that, you know, except for the early years when you see this wide fluctuations in growth, the growth has been stable, moderate, even high. And this I think is a characteristic that you don't always find in many developing countries, but they're not, so apart from stability, this growth was widely distributed. It trickled down, it reduced poverty, it was perhaps the main factor underlying poverty reduction, and also it helped to address nutrition. So anyway, Bangladesh's growth was widely shared. I think that's really the main story here. Now other macro indicators, you know, the savings rate arose from a very low level to about 25%. The national savings rose to around 35%, 36% from 8% in 1980. Investment has grown enormously from about 10% to over 32%. So public investment similarly in the initial years was higher than private, but now the private investment has become much larger. So basically, it's what you would expect in a development process where the savings rate goes up and investment takes off, led by the private sector. Now, so macroeconomic stability was in terms of the balance of payments, the results became comfortable, the debt to GDP ratio was always kept under control, about under 15% for most of the 50 years. The savings investment rates were impressive. And of course, overwhelming aid dependence that we have seen in the earlier years come down. The main weakness, I think, was the tax-to-GDP ratio and the high NPL in the banking sector, the outstanding loans in the banking sector, the non-performing loans. These are the two major issues that continue to be problematic for the country. The sectoral share is very quickly, we see the rapid decline in agriculture from 60% in 1972 to about 13% today. You see the rapid rise in industry from 6% to 31% services have grown, but not as fast. And for industry, it was mainly at RMG, the ready-made governments, followed by textiles, but there are other industrial sectors that are now emerging. For agriculture, it was not just rice, it has now also been fish and poultry and so on and so forth. And services sector, instead of being just low levels of services and low productivity services, it has now tended to become much higher level. The achievements in demographic areas like the fertility rate we've mentioned, the infant mortality rate, maternal mortality rate, these guys basically give you a very quick view of how rapidly these things have improved. Nutrition, again, the data is a bit patchy, but for whatever data that we do have, we do see an incredible performance in the nutrition sector, particularly in the nutrition status of children and also women. And the main element underlying this has been income growth, as opposed to direct nutrition, nutritional interventions. Again, the school enrollment view, I think there's a lot of familiarity with this. Basically, the story here is that female enrollment at all levels that increased dramatically. The primary sector, it is outstripped, the male enrollment, and similarly so for the secondary sector, the tertiary sector that is still lagging behind. So one would expect the gender outcomes to be impressive and that is what it was. I don't have any more time left, so I'm just going to go and talk. A little bit about poverty. I've said that much of the poverty decline can be attributed to growth, but also there was a lot of experimentation in terms of anti-poverty measures and methods led by NGOs, participated by the government, and I think it's a combination of both growth and direct poverty intervention programs. Inequality has been a problem and it has really become very high today from a base level of 0.36 in terms of genie to around 0.5 today, but the corresponding consumption genie remains stable and it has not really increased very much. So this is a contradiction. We can talk about why this has been the case during the discussion. So summing up I think Bangladesh's transformation, we can say that it has been a complex interplay of markets, micro-institutions, grassroots institutions that were created by the NGOs, technology policies and innovations, and these were driven by the state in some cases by NGOs, supported by the donors, and the private sector played a very important role, and the sectoral stories differ widely from one another, so it's very difficult to generalize or use one broad model or team to explain all this. I have avoided discussing things like democracy and governments, we can talk about it later if there is time. So let me conclude at this point. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much. I'm going to turn directly over to our discussant now. Darlene please you have the floor. Yes. And I've gotten a few questions already, but please please continue to send questions and we'll try to get to as many of them as we can. All right. So, thank you so much. Rachel and Mushy, your presentation was just full of so much insight. So we're looking forward to hearing the questions from the audience. It's a really interesting presentation because what Mushy has covered I think there are so many lessons that we can learn from Bangladesh. So, as a discussant, my role is really to think of the relevance of the Bangladesh experience, and I only have 10 minutes which is really unfair for Tanzania and what Tanzanian policymakers need to do for Tanzania to graduate. In my humble opinion, I think the Bangladesh experience highlights four lessons for Tanzania. I think lesson number one is the Bangladesh story reminds us that empowering women is really essential to ending extreme poverty. Countries can never really reach the full economic potential if women are not fully participating participating sorry. Bangladesh, I think he's a story of progress by empowering people. I think especially women. So over the past several decades, Tanzania has made significant significant progress in increasing women's access to education, entrepreneurship, wage employment and women's economic empowerment. That's a major role in the country's transition from low income to lower middle income status on July 1, 2020. There exists still to date issues that constrain women's ability to contribute to Tanzania's national development. So there's a lot of questions towards these constraints include, for example, the government can promote women's economic empowerment by providing tailored business and life skills training to female entrepreneurs who are operating in many sectors of the economy. By stepping up efforts to and child labor will also help and also to also lower school dropout rates and also provide childcare support, which are really vital to really expand women's participation in the workforce. I also suggest that conditional cash transfer programs can also be an effective strategy for perhaps keeping female students enrolled in school and also reduce the fertility rates among adolescents. Land reforms are also recommended because they really need to address the quality of service delivery and really boost female land ownership. So priorities, for example, can strengthen women lands rights by offering land typing subsidies to lower income household and also by providing incentive to encourage spouses to co title to address the gender gap in agricultural productivity. So policy makers should focus on expanding women's access to male household labor and also increasing women's use of agricultural inputs and also encouraging women to adopt new digital technologies. And then I think also find that behavioral interventions can also promote financial inclusion among women and also strengthen their capacity to manage both their personal and business finances. Lesson number two, I think is it's also closely linked to lesson number one. The Bangladesh story reminds us that food security, nutritional balance, employment generation and poverty alleviation are closely linked with the development of the agricultural sector. The Bangladesh success is well rooted in the agricultural sector. So for Tanzania agriculture accounts for the largest share of employment. The greater proportion of women than men work in agriculture, they both contribute substantially to both commercial and subsistence agriculture, including livestock and fishing. Women and girls, the so called unpaid family helpers are also responsible for food preparation, fetching water and also gathering firewood. And they are employed in the agriculture sector so to really make also nutrition security reality in Tanzania it's really important I think to also intensify nutritional awareness advocacy training and also educational programs that really maximize the consumption of nutritious foods from both own production and also market purchases. My nutrition in Tanzania is mostly affecting women of reproductive age and also young children. So the fact that we have so many women working in the agriculture sector means that if awareness is raised that women can be empowered by effectively and also actively engaging with community and local influences. Bangladesh I think was able to go on a broader support for more rapid changes in social norms, preferences and behaviors. I think this can also be done in Tanzania. For example, in Tanzania Southern Highlands women rarely give their young children healthy diets. Instead they rely on grains notably maize and millet. I think another important recommendation regarding lesson number two is also to really invest more in agriculture research and development, focusing on practices, technologies and services that are gender climate and nutrition sense, Lesson number three, I think the Bangladesh story also reminds us that it's possible to achieve economic transformation also by focusing on export led labor intensive manufacturing activities, given weak formal institutions and also a domestic environment with a high cost of doing business. So the capacity of labor intensive manufacturing firms say in textile leather and food processing sectors in Tanzania to capture value within global value chains, it's still limited. I think this really creates an urgent need for Tanzanian manufacturers maybe to shift gears from competing on low labor intensive productivity to competing on higher productivities. So I think for this to really happen, small, medium, micro, large enterprises will need to adopt better technologies across business functions and also production processes. To really help firms, especially SMEs, which are really the backbone of the Tanzanian economy to borrow for the technology needs. Easily, I think a stronger financial sector will be needed, and also continuing with regulatory reforms to really reduce the cost of doing business is also vital. The Tanzanian government and her development partners will also need to continue supporting education and also upskilling and also helping firms to have access to advisory services, and also making firms be aware of available technologies. So, and I also think that it's very important to also support quality connectivity to international markets. And then the last lesson, I think the Bangladesh story reminds us that it's really important to maintain a concerted national commitment to issues, and also sustaining it across excessive administration, regardless of political party. During the leadership of President John Magufuli, President John Magufuli from 2015 to 2021, anti-corruption efforts inspired the adoring Twitter hashtag, what would Magufuli do? It was also praised for encouraging infrastructure projects and also improving public service delivery. However, there were attacks on the political opposition, civil society, businesses in the country, international businesses, regional businesses, and also laws were also passed to impede information sharing. So President Samir Saloo Hassan, Tanzania's first female head of state, with a slogan, Kazian delay, loosely translated as the work must continue, has recognized that the lack of consistency creates uncertainty for all stakeholders. So managing the economy, stability, and policy consistency is especially important. It's really imperative to improve Tanzania's image, so Kazian delay. So to conclude this presentation, development paths are neither linear nor static and involve complex processes. There's really no definite recipe or standard prescription. I think Tanzania can really benefit from the Bangladesh story, lessons that are both positive and negative, while designing really policies that really reflect her particular conditions. So thank you so much for listening to me. Excellent. Thank you so much, Darlene. Mercia, would you like to respond before we take broader questions? Let's take a few more questions. Okay. So I have a number of questions piling up here and please continue to send your questions. The first set, the first question was by an anonymous person writing in, actually two questions here and they've, the first one comes up a couple of times so it's a good one to start with. So the first question speaks to sort of the political economy story and the role of democracy and governance that you ended on in your presentation. So question one is with the current authoritarian regime and the politicization of all state institutions, and no hope for fair elections do you think that the growth regime will be sustained. How do you negate the role of institutions in stabilizing the economy and growth. The second question is about the future potential of the country so when growth is hugely dependent on readymade garments and remittance how do you see the future potential of the country. Okay. First of all, the political economy story. Now, to start with, I think, there was a time when the Bangladesh political economy was based on the so-called large farmer or surplus farmer. And basically, it was an agrarian society, and therefore the leaders who emerge the lower middle class middle class leadership rooted in agriculture and from the surplus farmer category. And so the political economy was essentially a gradient in nature. Now, today what has happened is with the emergence of a capitalist class in Bangladesh. This political economy is completely changed. So it is in a way much more modern quote unquote. It is capitalists in its orientation. And because of the success in exports with the readymade garments. It has become familiar with world markets and opportunities in the world market. And therefore, but of course that the danger there is with the success of capitalism and the capitalist class. You have the emergence of crony capital as well alongside the independent capital. Now, if this crony capital element, which I fear has become more and more powerful. If this dominates everything else then you know the trajectory is going to be slightly different from what it has been the past. And the good thing in a way is that policies economic policies will probably be determined by the capitalist class, and in particular by crony capital, whoever comes to power. So, that's one thing in terms of democracy and governments. So for the last 50 years, it appears not to have mattered or mattered very much. And, and which is why I have actually not. I've deliberately not looked at it, because you know, as a role in Bangladesh's development. It would be very difficult. It would be, I would be hard pressed to find a role for Mac, what I would say macro governments and democracy, because one of the odds, or one of the miracles or paradox of Bangladesh is it did develop to the extent that it has, despite these developments, because there's no doubt that government macro governance is extremely poor, there's high level of corruption. But despite that, these development outcomes were possible. Now, here what I would like to add is that micro governance is why I use the word macro governance rather than micro governance micro governance was a different story. This space was available for NGOs and donors basically it was an unfettered space. And there you have seen the emergence of solid grassroots organizations, which were not inefficient, they're not exploitative this is played a very vital role I think in the month of the 20th, which is why I think institutions are of course important. But, you know, when we talk about institutions we tend to generalize, but we need to be a little more specific, what institutions is it that are more important than others for an agrarian country. You know it's the grassroots rural institutions that would be at the forefront of you know receiving and delivering services. So, that's that is the real strength of Bangladesh, even today. Now, but if you look to the future and this other part of the question was, you know, will this continue to the future. To the extent that you know the reforms with respect to governance institution has not really occurred that much. I think there's huge potential to do that. And without that I don't see how we can move forward to the ambitious goals that have been set. So it would be vital to carry out reforms in your governance and institutions, corruption, you know, cost of business and so forth. But and I would even go so far as to say that we need to start in, you know, in a few specific areas on this journey. First, of course, first of all, I think the banking system needs to be reformed, the tax and authority needs to be reformed. The central bank needs to, it has a lot of power on paper. But actually, we see that they have been in a policy reversals, which are very difficult to explain without reference to crony capital. So these things will need to be reformed. If the future growth trends have to be sustained. The other thing is on the positive side, it is not just an RMG story already made governments a textile story anymore, because what has happened in the middle of the meantime is a very large middle class is developed. And so there's a lot of now renewed energy in investment and industrialization based on say consumer variables. So that has taken off and, and, and spin off up from that has been that we already see sufficient energy accumulating in the non renovate garments industrial sector, which makes us believe that you know, industrialization will diversify and then additional areas will be will take place here again. And, and we also see that, you know, exports are new exports in pharmaceuticals in bicycles and a number of other fees so there are lots of kites out there now, flying in the air. And it all looks very good, but the critical element would be reforms in confidence and institutions. Thank you. So we have a couple of questions here that are great follow ups I think to to your, your response on these and I also wanted to give Darlene a chance to respond as well but let me, let me give these. I'll repeat the couple of questions here, and then I'll, I'll turn to merchant and then to Darlene to respond. So there's one question here from watch it on corruption in particular so you've touched on corruption. And the question is specifically asking about the role of not prosecuting those responsible for non performing loans, which are choking the financial sector and threatening the stability of the segment. So I have a question here from Jeremiah Olu about. Well, the question is, do you think that direct adoption of the Bangladesh model can transform an ailing economy like Nigeria, given the similar problems with bad governance and corruption. So, thoughts, especially around corruption and thinking about application elsewhere. Feel free to start and then maybe we turn to Darlene or if Darlene would like to jump in first also welcome. I have not really discussed corruption in my book because, as I explained why. But the MPL story in Bangladesh is not pretty anymore. I mean there have been massive defaults and unwillingness to do very much about it. But you know the other thing is this the problem of loan default is an old problem. It's now accumulated over the years. And part of the reason for this is that it was a deliberate mechanism to generate primitive accumulation when supporting the private sector or private sector entrepreneurship development. So that really has been that has been that was done with donor equists actually. So, in the early years and 80s in the 90s, you know, they're these bank loans, especially from state owned banks, they're generously made out to people knowing full well that these would never be repaid. But that was a deliberate ploy to generate, I think, an independent entrepreneurial class. So that's the story. Now, the time has come now I mean I think that primitive accumulations stage is over. And therefore it is now time to, you know, wheel it in. And that is not happening. And out of that reason is that now you have a strong crony crony class, which makes it difficult to actually do very much about it. And so that's the political economy there. Now, obviously, you know, something has to give for this to change. In terms of direct adopters I'm not sure what the question really was in terms of, you know, this mean that you know whether state led development can be useful for Nigeria. I don't think there is, you know, I don't think there's any uniform or generally applicable story here. What we as I've said what we've seen in Bangladesh is that some sectors like agriculture, green revolution, population control, you know, these were very, very strongly led by the government that supported by Thomas. There's no question about it. And but other sectors other stories relating to Bangladesh development actually did not originate in the state, but the state came forth and supported supported the particularly the RMG sector. The state support there was extraordinary. So it would be a combination in the malicious case it was the state, the NGOs, the private sector, and I would say ordinary people responded very well because you know once you have the space, you create the space you have the incentives. You know the story that people do not respond this is this is this is not correct. I mean I think time and again we were indoctrinated almost that the people do not respond to incentives. It's really not true. Given even half an opportunity we've found this you know poor, illiterate so called illiterate women. You know so called steeped in patriarchy and tradition responding to you know family planning responding to migration opportunities in the towns and even abroad. And so you know so that to say that people do not respond is absolutely rubbish. So people will respond. We just have to give them half a chance. I certainly agree with Moshe and corruption. How do you deal with corruption. I think it depends. It depends on the leadership. Certainly, on the president, john Pombi Michael fully he really took really strong measures, especially with the way that the public sector was delivering services, he would, for instance, walking into some of these public institution at 730 to ensure whether or not the civil service was at work. And also I think the manner in which he also responded against the political opposition against firms that were apparently allegedly not paying the taxes we also saw how he handled the cases of certain mining companies. And I think he, he gave a really, I would say, perhaps negative image there was a lot of fear so I think it's also very important when you are addressing corruption you respect the rule of law and that you have enough information or so about the circumstances. So, really, it's a really delicate, I would say, topic. So I think, depending on how you know the institutions in the countries are made to deal with such issues on the issue of whether or not Nigeria could adopt the Bangladesh model. Moshi clearly reiterated very well that initial conditions matter. I also said that every country has its own unique story. And the most important thing is to really learn from the good the bad and the ugly of that country and see whether the country can actually design their own policies based on the country's resources, especially labor. I would also encourage, I think this is also an area that I think we've also not talked much about but also the issue of graduate employability. I think the graduates that are leaving universities, for instance, and they want to go and work in various sectors of the economy, these are like skilled, they're supposed to be skilled graduates. So it's really important to see whether or not universities are actually producing competent employees that can also contribute effectively to Tanzania's national development. So, Olu, I think Nigeria has a different history from Bangladesh and certainly Tanzania. I know Nigeria has been blessed with so many natural resources, and in the case of Nigeria, I've made to say that these resources have actually been curses rather than blessing. So, initial conditions matters and also the capacity and also commitment also go hand in hand capacity and commitment of the leadership also matter. Thanks. Sorry, what are you. Okay, just to pick up on the last point that you made I wanted to ask about wanted to shift gears a little bit and ask about about aid and international assistance. I was struck in Merchant's presentation, you know, by several points where you highlighted that the various reforms were led by government but paid by donors. And of course this is, you know, relevant to a lot of ongoing discussions about local ownership and aid. And I wonder if there are lessons there or points there to highlight for other countries about relationships between local governments and, and, and donors. Well, I think I should clarify one thing that what I say that policies were led by government. Actually, I think it was a strong engagement because often policies were actually led by donors, let's speak, let's be frank about that. And in a way, government reacted, usually positively. It was no choice. I mean, if you want money, you have to listen. And, but what seems to be the case is that Bangladesh actually proved to be a good, good student of the new liberal paradigm. And, and despite all the things that we say about new liberalism and how badly it can affect the country. Unfortunately, these policies actually helped Bangladesh. For example, you know, structural adjustment and trade liberalization, this actually helped Bangladesh, actually, even if you talk about agriculture and the green revolution. There was initial work that had to be done preceding these policy changes, but once though that the basic institutions and infrastructure was in place technology was in place. Trade liberalization privatization of trade in food and so on. So what this state a very, very significant role in further catalyzing Bangladesh's agricultural performance. And what I usually say is the new liberal policies handed down by donors, accepted willingly unwillingly semi willingly whatever actually proved to be fruitful, right. It was in fact a great lesson to learn. There are problems and I talked about inequality, inequality is obviously a problem but then you know I mean, that's something that can perhaps be addressed in other ways so there are trade offs, but process of growth, the process of even widely shared So this was enabled by this close engagement between donors, the government. And as I said, the other important sectors of the economy, including the private sector. Thanks very much. We're almost, we're just about out of time but I wonder if Darlene would like to have a final comment. Yes, I wanted to ask, I don't know if it's a comment but I think it's a question for worship. The donor community in Bangladesh, were there more traditional donors supporting the development of Bangladesh or were these the non traditional donors supporting the development of Bangladesh so I would like you to just comment on who gave you think was probably maybe the best donor if that makes sense. So, to see the differences. Okay, let me refresh my memory I think the biggest bilateral donor has been and remains Japan. And the largest multilateral donors are the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, but the important role was played also by the UK DFID and also the Scandinavians. So actually everybody pitched in and they had their own little jurisdiction and sectors that they would guard very closely. So everybody was there but I think this is basically the major ones. And, and their practice is varied. The Scandinavians are usually better in terms of the terms and conditionalities. But over the years, I think the conditionality regime and the strings and so on these changed is improved. You know, you went back in ADB, you see, quite dramatic shifts in the way they handle these things. And, but when we were in the thick of it in the 80s and 90s. It was often very, very contentious and highly controversial. But over the longer on average it seems to have worked out. It's very much. Unfortunately, we need to close the seminar there. I don't want to keep it on time. But I thank you very much for for your presentations and your questions today and I think we could keep going with many more questions for you. We were talking in among us before the before the seminar about how the Bangladesh story hasn't received as much attention as it as it should. And I think that's why we've sort of given it a bit more attention and I hope that you'll all read Dr. Merchant's book, which is coming out next next month. And we can continue these discussions. So thank you very much. Thank you very much.