Senior Director of the Freedom and Prosperity Center at the Atlantic Council Dan Negrea has said Bangladesh has a bright future if it chooses the right development path that mobilizes the tremendous talent of the Bangladeshi people and empowers them to grow in the future.
“Very clearly Bangladesh has accomplished a lot in its economic development since its independence in 1971. It has a fast growth rate which is undeniable,” he said.
At the same time, he said their work shows that countries develop best when they have freedom in their choices of the development path.
Negrea who was the State Department’s Special Representative for Commercial and Business Affairs between 2019 and 2021 talked about three kinds of freedom - economic freedom, legal freedom and political freedom.
Property rights, trade freedom, investment freedom and women’s economic freedom are part of the economic freedom while elections, civil liberties and political rights are part of the political freedom, he said.
Negrea said legal freedom has five components – informality, bureaucracy and corruption, security, judicial independence and effectiveness; and clarity of the law.
Freedom is the surest path to durable prosperity and free countries in general have a much higher prosperity score, he mentioned in his presentation made at the American Centre in Dhaka on Wednesday.
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Bangladesh outperforms the region on prosperity but remains behind the global average, Negrea said.
Since 2005, the freedom score of Bangladesh has been below that of the South and Central Asia region.
He mentioned that four prosperity indicators – health, minority rights, inequality, environment - are higher than the overall prosperity score.
Two prosperity indicators – income and education - lie below the overall prosperity score.
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Talking about the elections, he said free and fair elections are an international standard and it is important that the opposition is allowed to compete fairly and the press needs to remain free.
Negrea also highlighted the importance of inviting international observers to confirm that the election is free and fair.
He said education is crucially important to explain to the young people that they have rights and obligations to participate in democratic process.
Negrea said Bangladesh is a very beautiful country with very welcoming, hospitable and very smart people. “I enjoyed my visits to two universities and two think tanks where I talked about our works.”