Speaking at the recent annual conference of the Bangladesh Administrative Service Association, Chief Adviser Dr Muhammad Yunus has emphasised the need to create opportunities for young people, asserting that Bangladesh’s large population is not a burden but a valuable resource.
The commonly used Bangla phrase for siphoning off money out of the country – “taka pachar” – is rather misleading. Because taka, the Bangladeshi currency, is never taken out of Bangladesh. It’s not useful anywhere else. What goes out is its equivalence in foreign currencies, especially, US dollars. The technical term for such criminal act is Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs). Mistakenly, sometimes IFFs are referred to as money laundering – a processing of criminal proceeds to disguise their illegal origin.