Locations
UNDP In-Gov Conference
(Inclusion.Innovation.Integration)
Way forward to UNDP Bangladesh
Bangabandhu International Conference Center 16:30-18:00, 2 December (Mon) 2019
Statements by the Ambassador of Japan
On behalf of the government of Japan, I would first like to express my sincere gratitude to all the senior government officials, UN colleagues, and its secretariat for organizing this national governance conference today. It’s always been my pleasure to reach out to all the stakeholders to share varieties of practical experiences and insights on prospects and challenges of development in Bangladesh.
In 2019, the population of Bangladesh reached 163 million people and it was ranked 8th in the world. The urban population of Dhaka also arrived at 14 million people, which already exceeded the population of Beijing. If we look at the economic side, Bangladesh marked 6% GDP growth in average in the last decade and scored 8% GDP growth in 2018. Backed up by the economic growth, Bangladesh is now moving forward various large-scale infrastructure developments to join middle-income countries by 2021 and advanced countries by 2041.
In the course of this growth, GNI per capita in FY2018-19 also marked $1,909 with 9% increase compared with the one in the earlier fiscal year. I have no doubt that this is a remarkable growth, but on the other hand, to attain the status of advanced economy, it needs to direct itself at the goal of six times as much as the present income level. Furthermore, in addition to unforeseen circumstances around climate change and natural disaster, the country would be required more balanced macro-economic policy on the back of the newly set up import of LNG. Adding more, there is also a burden to respond to nearly one million displaced persons now in Cox’s Bazar.
If I can talk about economic growth from our history, in the 1950s after the World War II, economic power of Japan was not at the level of advanced economy, in fact, we received a large amount of assistance from the World Bank to construct, for example, major steal factories, highways, and Tokaido Shinkansen (bullet train) Line. Then, it was 1964 when Japan officially joined advanced economies by taking OECD membership. So, it took approximately 20 years after the WW II for us to be an advanced country.
The upcoming 20 years that Bangladesh is going to experience will be a challenging period, though I believe exponential growth in the interim is possible. If I can share our experience during such challenging period, in order for a country to bloom its economic potential, at the same time of focusing on infrastructure development, I would say, enhancement of governance entailed with “capacity development” and “institutional building” is more important than anything.
Within this context, under the vision of Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP), which contributes to regional connectivity and the improvement of investment climate in the region, Japan has been introducing durable, eco-friendly, and people-friendly infrastructure with its technological strength. And not only that, by working together with all stakeholders to find custom-made approaches that fit with the national goal and the development needs of Bangladesh, Japan contributed not only to the provision of infrastructure in need but also to the enhancement of “capacity development” and “institutional building” of Bangladesh.
We also support projects more directly related with governance issues in Bangladesh by packaging our support tools of TA and loan without being caught in the traditional silo of development assistance. For a long time, we supported different levels of public authorities such as central government, City Corporation, Parshva, Upazila, and Union. As the hybrid package assistance with TA and loan, I am happy to shave with you that next year we will launch a new project targeting Narayanganj CC, Gazipur CC, Comilla CC, Cox’s Bazar CC. In parallel, we also support legal system of Bangladesh by promoting City Corporation Act and Parshva Act; and providing a number of trainings to judiciaries in Bangladesh to improve local governance.
In these efforts, one good example from one project in Ulipur Parshva in Kurigram District, with regard to capacity development of government officers, our technical experts provided them with not only training opportunities but also a series of sessions to discuss the needs of communities and the role of officials. And what happened after the trainings was, these officials obtained skills to find unnecessary expenditure and saved their budget and afterwards, one official allocated the saved budget to rehabilitate infrastructure at the time of natural disaster and actually the budget was spent to support afflicted people. Such responses created better communication between the government and citizens, and this resulted in the rapid increase of the city’s tax collection in two years. Time after time, I am hearing a number of such examples where a positive change of mind set has resulted in better deliverables for citizens.
Ladies and Gentlemen, as I said earlier, on the one hand Bangladesh is in a momentous economic growth, on the other hand benefits from such growth are granted to citizens only when it comes with the provision of public services and social safety nets based on their development needs. Moreover, when we think the nation is built on people, it is particularly important for us all to seek ways for social and economic development together so that each citizen and each family as the smallest social unit could realize improvement of life standard and happiness of life.
Such foundation is so-called “good governance”, and Japan is committed to further advance the concept of “Human Security” which was worked out by the Late. Mrs. Sadako Ogata. Moreover, as the government of Japan, we would also like to make more effort than ever to closely cooperate with UNDP and work with the government of Bangladesh on varieties of development issues together.
