ABSTRACT
Bangladesh faces the challenge of achieving accelerated economic growth and alleviating the massive poverty that afflicts nearly two-fifths of its 140 million people. Strategies for meeting this challenge have included a shift away from state-bureaucratic controls and industrial autarky towards economic liberalization and integration with the global economy. These policy reforms were initiated in the mid–1980s against the backdrop of serious macroeconomic imbalances, which had been caused in part by a decline in foreign aid and in part by a preceding episode of severe deterioration in the country’s terms of trade. The beginning of the 1990s saw the launching of a more comprehensive reform program, which coincided with a transition to parliamentary democracy from semi-autocratic rule. 1
