After long nine years of wait, Bangladesh has been declared an
eligible country for the Threshold Program of the Millennium Challenge
Corporation (MCC) of the USA. Bangladesh has expressed its satisfaction at the decision and noted the recently-released MCC
Scorecard 2014 where Bangladesh scored 11 out of 20 indicators, and
did fairly well in other indicators as well, said a Foreign Ministry
release on Thursday night. Failure to gain desired achievement in
corruption control index has apparently delayed the recognition for
Bangladesh. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was closely following
the development and was in constant touch with the MCC in the last
four years. Foreign Minister Dr Dipu Moni, during her official
meetings with US former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Dhaka
and incumbent Secretary of State John Kerry in Washington DC urged
them to consider Bangladesh’s access to the MCC fund putting forward
strong arguments in favour of Bangladesh in the programme. The issue
was in the agenda of the Partnership Dialogues between Bangladesh and
the USA. The Foreign Secretary led a team to the MCC in March 2013
to convince it with necessary data and statistics for improving
Bangladesh’s score. As per the advice of the MCC, the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs has been continuously pursuing various sources like
World Bank, Brooking Institutions, Freedom House, Transparency
International etc. for Bangladesh’s inclusion in the MCC. In MCC
scorecard 2014, for the first time, Bangladesh passed ‘Corruption
Control’ and ‘Gender in the Economy’ indices which reflects the
present government’s determination of fighting corruption, and also
commitment of ensuring greater opportunity for women in the economic
activities of the country. The positive scorecard is a clear
recognition of Bangladesh’s success in recent years in improving
governance and achieving yet higher gender equality, women empowerment
and other socio-economic indicators. Bangladesh will continue its
efforts to improve on all indicators as the government is constantly
upgrading and improving upon its pro-people policies. – UNB
