The prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, on Tuesday said the country’s GDP growth would have reached 8 per cent if the construction work on the Padma Bridge, which faced a setback due to the false graft allegation raised by the World Bank, could have been started in due time. ‘The country has already achieved 7.11 per cent GDP growth in the last fiscal year and if we could have started the work on Padma Bridge in due time its works would have been completed by the time adding around another 1 per cent GDP growth. By now, our GDP growth could have reached 8 per cent and that possibility was foiled,’ she said. The prime minister said this in her introductory speech during the weekly ECNEC meeting held at the NEC conference room in the city.
‘A false allegation has unleashed so many attacks in the life of that person…he had to waste valuable time of his life and he was also deprived of serving the country,’ she said adding that all should remain cautious so that such sad incidents do not reoccur in the future.
The prime minister said her party did not assume office to make its own fortunes but to build the fate of common people. ‘But, making false allegation, without any reason, I think, there’s another reason behind it.’
She also hoped that the march forward of the country will continue.
Earlier on Friday, a Canadian court acquitted two former officials of engineering giant SNC-Lavalin and a Bangladeshi-Canadian businessman of the charge of planning to bribe Bangladeshi officials to secure a consultancy contract in the Padma Bridge project, in which the World Bank was its lead financier.
The bridge’s work got stalled after the lead financier suspended its funding in October 2011 raising corruption allegations. The other lenders followed suit.
The Prime Minister presided over the meeting as ECNEC Chairperson. Noting that Bangladesh has now emerged as a ‘role model’ of development worldwide, she said her government has brought Bangladesh into a respectable position and all the allegations brought against her government proved to be false.
