Bangladesh’s high growth under Hasina was fake: CA Yunus to Reuters

The head of Bangladesh's interim government, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, told Reuters on Thursday that his country's high growth under ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina was "fake" and faulted the world for not questioning what he said was her corruption.

"She was in Davos telling everybody how to run a country. Nobody questioned that," Dr Yunus told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in the Swiss Alpine resort. "That's not a good world system at all."

"The whole world is responsible for making that happen. So that's a good lesson for the world," he said. "She said, our growth rate surpasses everybody else. Fake growth rate, completely."

Dr Yunus did not elaborate on why he thought that growth was fake, but went on to stress the importance of broad-based and inclusive growth, and the need to reduce wealth inequality.

Annual growth in the Muslim-majority country of 170 million people accelerated to nearly 8 per cent in the financial year 2017/18, compared with about 5 per cent when Sheikh Hasina took over in 2009, before the impact of Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine pulled it down.

In 2023, the World Bank described Bangladesh as one of the world's fastest-growing economies.

"Since its independence in 1971, Bangladesh has transformed from one of the poorest countries to achieving lower-middle income status in 2015," it said.