The ‘guided ownership’ revisited: An agenda for independent policy making in Bangladesh

Abstract

With the failures of the SAP regimes, the WB and IMF were forced to learn that country ownership of
development policy was critical and based on the new insight they advocated for a new approach which was
popularly known as poverty reduction strategy paper (PRSP). The major shift in PRSP was that the loan
recipient countries were required to ensure ‘country ownership’ in their respective PRSP through participation
of the major stakeholders. Bangladesh also developed a PRSP to receive loan from the WB and IMF. The
ownership of Bangladesh’s PRSP was seriously contested. Thus, this article broadly attempts to revisit the
ownership dynamics in PRSP regime and provide a broader framework of an independent development
agenda setting in Bangladesh as an incarnation of engaged policy making. In the process of reviewing
ownership dynamics, it also shades light on Bangladesh’s historical engagement with the WB and IMF to
showcase donor influences with regard to policy reforms of a poor country like Bangladesh. The article also
argues that if Bangladesh wants to ensure policy ownership it must address some local conditions since from
hindsight it could be argued that ownership is a local agenda that is determined through the governance
pattern of a particular country and cannot be ensured through imposition.