Q. Give us a short glimpse of your career journey, and what was your ultimate passion since childhood?
Well, I call myself an entrepreneurial economist. I am an economist by training and experience. Speaking of the professional side, I have worked for multinational companies and international development agencies for more than 15 years. My last stint was with the World Bank Group, where I spent almost ten years. There, I worked in the private sector development units as a Program Manager and as a senior economist. Within the biggest sphere of economy, there is a private sector economy. For Bangladesh, that is much about the economy. While strengthening the Private Sector, we work for the growth of the private sector in any country. The private sector would comprise, among others, Investment, Trade, FDI, International Trade, small businesses, technology, a financial sector including the capital market. As part of the World Bank Group, we worked for policy, regulatory, and market development in these areas so that the private sector has ample opportunity to grow and within the process, it can contribute to economic development through employment, taxes, revenues, and more. I worked for a similar kind of work on behalf of the British Government in the department for International Development at the growth team as a Private Sector Development advisor.
Q. Did you always have an interest in sectors like policy-making and strategies, or it just came out as another responsibility/profession?
My schooling was in Bangladesh, and much of my tertiary education was in the USA. I have a Ph.D. in Economics from The University of Manchester. Before that, I have studied business and completed my major in finance and economics. I grew up in Dhaka, just like any other boy and girl of the ’80s. Growing up, we had the privilege to be close to nature and closer to more people. From late high school, I had aspirations to interact with people and do things for them. While looking for my answers, I found out that getting involved in Politics was a way, but I at that point did not feel I was ready for politics, so I looked for other ways. After completing higher studies, I started to understand the system better, the real-life, and its various avenues. I figured out that one such great entry point is entrepreneurship /business, either as a businessman or being a part of the business ecosystem. I studied business in my undergrad intending to work in the corporate sector. I worked for a multinational bank and after that a multinational pharmaceutical company. This allowed me to learn how a business operates. As I understood more, I found an even more impactful way to contribute to the prosperity of people, including the opportunity to continuously interact with the public from all walks of life, and that is through development. I wondered how I balance between promoting ways and means towards prosperity for society and people while availing myself the opportunity to learn from that and interact with people. My answer led to an area that has a confluence of business and development. Soon, I figured out about Private Sector Development and its power, both for economies and for my aspirations and priorities. For economic growth, the private sector is the main avenue towards economic prosperity. And that is when I was motivated to engage myself in policy and regulatory and market development for private sector growth. I entered international development, and I worked for the British government as an economic growth advisor working on private sector growth. From there, I moved to the World Bank Group, where I ended up heading the private sector unit of the World Bank Group in Bangladesh. I worked as head of the combined unit World Bank and IFC in Bangladesh, and eventually in East Asia and later in East Asia, economic competitiveness program in 11 countries.
Q. You have been working as the advisor for international development and how was the experience so far and what roles are you playing?
It was quite long ago, around early 2010. It has been a great experience. The department of International Development is now doing the British Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO) Development. It brings a long-term and strategic approach to development. They address core causes of poverty or core avenues of development. DFID’s approach emphasized the strategic orientation of how you bring together all the right elements and actors to get to the development solution. Then they take a long-term approach to pursue the outcomes. So, all combining it gave me a very unique opportunity. The department of International Development worldwide is also very renowned for looking at the governance and political economy angle which was extremely helpful in understanding policy and markets in most developing countries including Bangladesh. Moreover, the Development of International Bangladesh is one of the pioneers of Bangladesh to bring in concepts such as SME finance, investment climate improvement, taxation reforms, and privatization. When Nepal came out of the Civil War in 2007, there was an early assessment for post-civil war Nepal to determine the source of the economic growth and what role the private sector trade investment had in that. I got to have the privilege to be one of the team leaders in developing that strategy which formed the Nepal government and development partner’s guiding strategy in subsequent years in taking policy as development finance and development support for economic growth. This is why my experience was very rewarding.
Q. Did you have a passion for studies and policy-making work?
I certainly had a passion. That is why I enjoy it in those positions. I had the passion because it touched upon some of the fundamental aspirations that I always had. I always valued being able to learn from and interact with people from various stakeholder groups in pursuing goals for self, society, and the country. I was confused between ways of ensuring doing something that has a lasting impact or positive effect on a group of people. The policy for economic growth, business growth, market development has been my core area. I realized that many businesses have millions of customers they serve. But by combining policy with trade and investment, one could seek to render benefits to an entire country. Any person wanting to work with policy has to work with diverse and interesting groups of people like politicians, media, civil servants, businesses, etc. My opportunities allowed me to work with a diverse group of people. When the country benefits through you, the satisfaction received is quite profound. In Bangladesh, the special economic zone agenda is a very important industrial policy. It is fast-moving, and perhaps one of the top 3 most important industrial development policy tools for Bangladesh. I had the privilege of playing an influential role in bringing the concept of a special economic zone in Bangladesh and popularizing it with the government and other stakeholders to give it a shape of reality- a new law, regulation, infrastructural project development, etc. I feel good about what I have done as part of this policy work, and a special economic zone was adopted in Bangladesh as a core part of Industrial policy making. I feel good that this is doing something good for our country, the private sector, and millions of people through jobs and income.
Q. How did your opportunity at World Bank Group (WBG) come out to be, and would you like to discuss any particular achievement at WBG that you take pride in?
I was working in Bangladesh. I also worked in Nepal for DFID. Alongside that, I worked for private sector development and economic competitiveness and interacting with partners in the World Bank Group. At that point, the World Bank Group was ramping up their support in Bangladesh in the area of economic competitiveness. I joined the IFC of World Bank Group in 2010 and was there for ten years until 2020. The experience was also rewarding and very rich. Everything that we did with DFID was already there, but with the World Bank came greater opportunities and more direct involvement concerning policy dialogue, policymakers, politicians, the private sector, and civil servants. There was greater opportunity for policy dialogue, and plenty of room to generate new ideas followed by big implementation programs. I was privileged to be a part of one of the very first regulatory reform programs which contributed heavily to digital Bangladesh back in 2010. As a World Bank Group, we had a great opportunity to work with the governments for policy reforms and we could bring diversified ideas into policy engagement and support programs. We worked on special economic zones, public-private dialogue. We brought the public and private sectors together for continuous dialogue on policy, regulatory, and market development issues that required improvement. We also brought in alternate dispute resolution mechanisms for commercial disputes. Bangladesh takes a long time to resolve legal disputes, which has become a critical problem for businesses. So, we got the opportunity to bring a formal institutional platform for alternate dispute resolution which is known as the Bangladesh International Arbitration Center. We got the chance to work with partners in Bangladesh to establish it as an effective institution and popularize this concept. Moreover, we worked with NBR and brought in tax alternate dispute resolution, and this required reform of tax-related laws. Another piece of work was sector competitiveness development strategies. We started working with the government and some of the relevant private sectors to identify high-priority export sectors and operated with the government for holistic policy and strategy development. We also worked towards strengthening the f trade facilitation. As a result, the government decided to adopt a national single window, risk management principles, drafting of a new modern customs law. Our work covered doing business reforms. It measures the quality of the business environment in the country. Bangladesh has not been doing well as it is in the bottom 15% for the last several years. To address these weaknesses, there was the need for a full-fledged business reform program because doing business is a multi-faceted area. Due to our effort and our counterpart’s willingness, a formal doing business reform program was rolled out in early 2017. Based on two years of work, early results were so visible, as Bangladesh made the single largest improvement or jump in the last 10 years in 2019. World Bank Group gave me the chance to work globally as well. In South Asia, I worked in Sri Lanka, Nepal, and India. My work with India was in one of the high-profile projects. Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi wanted to improve India’s business environment and business ranking. In early 2015, the World Bank was requested to support the government of India to help bring the reforms that help improve India’s business environment and ranking. I was appointed as the task team leader for the World Bank group. It was not easy as it is a big, federal country but we, together with our counterpart in the Indian Government, set up the work so well that India made great progress in Nepal, headed the investment climate improvement program for the World Bank Group in Nepal. After Sri Lanka came out of the war, a couple of years after that, I was part of a team that developed a private sector development strategy for some of the formerly war-affected provinces. Based on that, the Sri Lankan government and Sri Lankan partners rolled out market development and private sector development programs in those formerly war-affected areas. Finally, I was part of the World Bank Group East Asia pacific team for more than 14 months when I was in Singapore, a hub for the World Bank group. There, I was leading an economic competitiveness improvement program for 11 countries across East Asia and the Pacific that involved working on investment climate improvement I, trade environment and trade competitiveness, technology and start-up ecosystem as entrepreneurship and development program. So, all together it was a fascinating experience. It got me a chance to understand policy making, policy implementation, and how it affects and impacts the business, economy, and people.
Q. What was the vision that inspired you to form a policy exchange of Bangladesh?
This builds on all the passion, contribution, experience, and engagement. I felt that Bangladesh will greatly benefit from an institution that can work on facilitating policy debates, particularly on the private sector economy which has been the main engine for the growth in its stellar economic performance over the last few decades. The private sector economy has to play an even greater role for Bangladesh to achieve its next level of development aspiration, an upper-middle-income country by the 2030s and a developed country by 2041. To reduce poverty, Bangladesh needs high-income high-quality jobs, and the most sustainable jobs will come from the private sector, and for that Bangladesh will significantly improve investment. There are already a number of think tanks, who work on a broader economy, including the private sector but, I felt that given the criticality of the private sector-led growth the importance of an institution that focuses on policy debate, market development, investment, and trade aspects which forms the private sector economy, will add great value. It can contribute to bringing the government and the private sector including the foreign private sector together on the table for continuous dialogue. There was a great opportunity and a gap that helped me to think of a policy exchange.
Q. How is Policy Exchange contributing to the economic development of Bangladesh? What projects or activities is it currently running?
So, we work across three different areas as part of policy exchange. The first is analytics and data, where we do different diagnostics, assessment of issues on national and policy level and even at times on specific problems at project level such as infrastructure projects and so on. That is to understand issues, the current state, identify gaps, opportunities, and ways forward. The second area of work is facilitating policy dialogue, so whereby taking the evidence generated by the analytics and bringing the relevant stakeholders together and facilitating their views, also bringing those to the close attention of the policymaker so that the right decisions and actions are taken in a timely manner. The third one is called investment advisory, which is supporting foreign investors and as well as domestic investors with sector diagnostics, sector growth potential, market entry strategy, political economy understanding, and facilitating linkages with the government as well as with the private sector. We are working with BGMEA, the largest association in the country on how to improve insolvency and restructuring policy framework in the country. Once this is done, it is going to help all other sectors in the country. We are working with several foreign investors as well as foreign investor’s chambers to identify new high growth potential sectors that can bring in FDI in Bangladesh, which can help Bangladesh in economic diversification. We are also working with a couple of institutions on business environment assessment e.g. how Bangladesh’s current business environment is and where is the strength, and where are the improvement opportunities? We are also working on identifying the opportunities in the number of big infrastructure initiatives- how can they help Bangladesh, and what would hold the best opportunities in Bangladesh.
Q. What opportunities does Policy Exchange provide for the youths? Why should the youths engage themselves more regarding policy dialogue and issues?
We have a very young and talented analyst team. A number of talented, young, economics and business graduates are working with us fully and part-time. Secondly, our work on the private sector economy, Aims to create an environment for private sector growth which will create employment economic opportunities for the semi-skilled, skilled youths of the country. Our work focuses on a number of sectoral assessments like infrastructure, e-commerce, and digital finance. All of these are very important for young professionals since they will be using a lot more e-commerce and a lot more of digital finance.
Q. Being involved in so many roles and activities, how do you deal with the challenges that arise from the different sectors?
It is a bit demanding, as it takes a lot of time, energy, and thought. What keeps me motivated is to work with new people in making opportunities. Second, it is very important to have the right team. Lastly, it is also important to have the right partners.
Q. Bangladesh has been building a strong track record regarding economic development. Do you think it’ll sustain? Share your thoughts on this?
Bangladesh has done tremendously well in both economic and social development over the past decades. Covid-19 did make some unexpected impact, but Bangladesh was doing well right before Covid-19. Bangladesh became self-sufficient on food security despite land becoming lesser in terms of availability. Bangladesh is also the best in South Asia for gender empowerment. Bangladesh is also one of the best in Asia in terms of many other social indicators like child mortality, literary rate, and life expectancy. Bangladesh has done tremendously well, and based on that very rightly Bangladesh became a middle-income country. But our country can go even further as it has more potential. The geographical location is great, has competitive labor, it has experience in large manufacturing and it has market access. It can take advantage of all of these and boost the competitiveness of its economic environment. It can not only sustain but take the progress to the next level but for that Bangladesh has to improve the quality of the business environment and it needs to quickly respond to the new growth opportunities. Institutional capability for policy response needs to be strengthened.
Q. As a researcher and an economist, which particular area has a good potential in contributing to our economy?
The ready-made garment sector has shown Bangladesh’s capability in terms of manufacturing. The same level of experience can be leveraged and replicated in other manufacturing sectors such as leather and footwear, light manufacturing, and ICT. The entire country has great potential but obviously given the infrastructure, port, it is better across Dhaka and Chittagong growth corridors. The entire corridor can be developed as an industrial corridor. And all the other areas surrounding that can be further improved.
Q. How adaptive we are in terms of technology and what are the opportunities that this sector is bringing for the different sectors in our country?
We have to be a lot more welcoming. Of course, we have the advantage of having a digital Bangladesh. Almost 98% of the country has mobile coverage. So, these are great foundations, but in terms of using technology in business, whether it is manufacturing or service, we are still at an early stage. Now, the futures market is going to be heavily influenced by technology. Other countries are moving fast towards technology adoption and even the buyers of many export products are moving towards countries, who can produce what they need in a technology-centered way. So, I believe Bangladesh needs to adapt and apply technology in a faster way in its key economic sectors. Digital finance is one area where I think we need to move very fast. What is required for all this is enabling infrastructure, protective regulations, and facilitating regulations such as cybersecurity, consumer protections, and so on.
Q. According to you which global trends will shape the world economy in the next 5 years?
Well, firstly, it is technology. The technology was coming anyway before Covid-19 in manufacturing. For example, 3D printing, artificial intelligence, IoT. As Covid-19 is settling down with vaccination, companies, corporates, and even governments taking a faster move towards technology. From buyers to everybody, the value chain needs to adopt and adapt the technology. Secondly, the youth who are coming to labor markets as employees, consumers, and so on. We need to keep up with their taste and demands. Third, there will be a greater sensitivity to standards such as quality standards, environmental standards, and social standards. We will see greater compliance, greater responsibility, and a more positive attitude to ensure standards in all aspects.
Q. Working in different countries on different levels and different policymaking, with all your given experience, if you need to give three bits of advice to beyond any age group. What will be the advice?
In terms of the policy, it is very important to bring the public and the private sector together in understanding what are the policy gaps/needs, policy change requirements, and reform needs. Neither side can do only on their own. It takes both sides to complement one another. Secondly, when we do policy, one needs to have transparency, predictability, and feedback opportunities. Once a policy is made and rolled out, it is not the end of it. And if it is not benefiting everybody in the desired way, the government or decision-makers need to understand that. We call that feedback loop. And this interacting feedback loop is quite important.
