There is no denying the fact that embryonic countries constantly demonstrate a predisposition to bring in the policy pronouncement of highly developed countries in their delicate resources despite the shifting of overall socio-economic procedure virtually. In bona fide world state of affairs aspects that next to influence the strategy decisions of budding countries are found fictional in progressive countries. It is evident that reserve constraints and technical non-progressive phenomena are two focal setting that formulate the budding countries reliant upon the advanced countries. The highly developed countries make available financial assistance for the economic development of the developing countries through unusual multilateral and bilateral donor agencies, which are officially termed as ‘Development Partner’
The ‘Development Partner’ all the way through their lending tricks plays a vital role in the policy-making method of developing countries. The intact process is now more evident in an interestingly univocal world order that materialize after the collapse of communism as a governing and economic system in the 1980s. The international financial agencies more than ever the World Bank and International Monetary Fund as policy shift pursued a free-market-based world order where the developing countries were urged, cajoled and hard-pressed to initiate market economy through structural modification reforms.
As a result, over the last one-decade developing countries have made changes in their state oriented development strategy mostly in line with the policy advice of the Development Partners.
Development Partners. tend to justify their role in policy decisions of recipient countries that aids are given from the taxpayers’ money of the advanced countries who preserve the right to know whether money is being utilized in proper ways. Despite continued financial assistance by the Development partners a vast majority of world population in the recipient countries live under the poverty line and unable to meet their basic needs. Increasingly Development partners are becoming concerned with the aid effectiveness and often attribute the underdevelopment of third world countries to their inappropriate internal policies. Although the failure of IMF’s policy advice in managing the financial crisis in East Asia has given rise counter argument that the economic crisis afflicting the developing countries was fundamentally global in nature
The World Bank in its policy research report, “Assessing Aid, What works, What doesn’t, and Why” has laid emphasis on the internal policies of the recipient countries as important factors to make aid effective. In different international forums including the Aid Consortium Meeting that held under the auspices of the World Bank, the Development partners review the policy issues of the recipient countries with top priority; and before making any aid commitment want to make it sure that appropriate policy environment is prevailing in the recipient countries.
Among the Development partners the World Bank (WORLD BANK) is the most important whose confessional financial assistance has allowed it enormous access in the policy making process of developing countries which we can see with particular reference to Bangladesh.
The World Bank in the form of International Bank for Reconstruction and development has been working in Bangladesh since 1972, soon after the emergence of Bangladesh, its role in different sectors of development of Bangladesh is being geared up on a large scale. Robert Dr. McNamara was the First World Bank president visited Bangladesh in the year 1972 to weigh up the aid necessity of the war shattered country. The then highly nationalistic government that piloted to the emancipation of the country from occupying Pakistani forces was very much critical about the Bank’s close allies with the Pakistani regime. The dispute that emerged between the Bank and GOB was the issue of the Bangladesh’s share of debt liability. At those hyper critical states the then government declined to take the responsibility of debts taken by the erstwhile Pakistan government from different bilateral and multilateral donor agencies. In the First Aid Consortium meeting of donor countries, which was held in Dhaka in March 1973, the Bank exerted pressure upon the government to come to a solution on the debt issue. After long parley the then government had accepted an inherited debt liability of $483 million against the projects, completed before independence and physically located in the territory of the erstwhile East Pakistan. The process through whichBangladesh resolved it’s past debt liability was viewed as highly instructive and mentioned as a glaring example of the Bank’s pressure on Bangladesh. But dependence upon the external aid left very little option for the government of the newly independent country to reject the Bank’s conditional lending offer. Domestic resources that were available to the economy found inadequate to implement the development projects. As a result, despite the Bank’s controversial role in the liberation struggle, the GOB had to accept conditional external assistance to implement the first five-year plan, which was launched in 1973. In the subsequent years, dependence of the country on the mobilization and influx of foreign funds into Bangladesh for financing not only the development projects but also the import of food items and essential commodities has become more institutionalized.
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