Dhaka, May 5 -- Withdrawing from the ongoing International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan programme would be a short-sighted move and ultimately detrimental to Bangladesh's long-term economic interests, warned Professor Selim Raihan, Executive Director of the South Asian Network on Economic Modelling (SANEM), in a Facebook post on Sunday.
"It is worth looking beyond the immediate economic cost of the loan and valuing the strategic advantage the IMF programme represents in driving long-overdue structural reforms - in areas such as banking, taxation, public expenditure, and exchange rate management," he wrote.
While acknowledging that the $4.7 billion IMF loan, disbursed in tranches, is not transformative in size, Professor Raihan cautioned again...