Bangladesh struggling to build responsible market economy
Saifur tells Asia 2015 confce in London
Unb, Dhaka
Finance and Planning Minister M Saifur Rahman yesterday said Bangladesh is struggling to consolidate a democratic polity and build a competitive and responsible market economy alongside its fight against poverty."The push and pull of each of these struggles render the overall task a highly challenging one," he told the inaugural session of a conference titled ‘Asia 2015: Promoting Growth and Ending Poverty in Asia’ in London, according to a message received here. Britain's Department for International Development (DFID) in collaboration with World Bank and Asian Development Bank organised the two-day conference . British Prime Minister Tony Blair, ministers from Asian countries and experts from development banks also spoke while British parliamentary under secretary of state for international development Gareth Thomas gave the address of welcome. "No aspiration in today's world is more urgent and more compelling than our fight against poverty," Saifur told the conference. The finance minister said Bangladesh has made significant progress over the past two decades, but that such achievements are not well known outside the country. He welcomed the organisers of the conference for providing an opportunity to highlight some of the achievements and ongoing challenges encountering Bangladesh in its development endeavours. He gave credit to farmers, who have more than doubled food production in the last 30 years, as it also goes to the efforts of successive governments to devise some of the most successful safety net programmes around the world. "Cumulatively, Bangladesh graduated in 2003 to the medium development group of countries by UNDP's ranking," he said, listing the achievements of Bangladesh especially on the socioeconomic front. Later at a press conference, Saifur said the objective of this Asia 2015 conference is essentially to bring back international attention to Asia since the focus had shifted to Africa because of various circumstances. In this context, he congratulated the government of the United Kingdom for taking the initiative to hold this conference. The press conference was also addressed by UK International Development Minister Hilary Benn, Indonesian Finance Minister Mulyani Indrawati, Pakistan Economic Minister Hina Khar, Japanese Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs K Toyama and ADB President H Kuroda. In the afternoon session of the conference, Saifur was a panelist in a discussion on fostering private sector development.
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