There is a growing consensus amongdevelopment practitioners about the importance of governanceto poverty reduction and economic growth, although thereremains disagreement about the direction of causality. Poorgovernance manifests itself in increased corruption, poorservice delivery, weak accountability and a crisis incitizens' confidence in the state. In Bangladesh, thegovernance challenges are interconnected and span a widerange of issues: weak public financial management, lowrevenue mobilization, an inefficient and weak procurementsystem, inadequate electoral laws including unregulatedelection financing that limits and distorts politicalcompetition, weak formal accountability systems including adysfunctional Parliament and Judiciary, a lack oftransparency in government decision making, and thepermeation of partisan politics through all publicinstitutions. A concerted effort to tackle these problemswill require reforming formal institutions, laws, andprocesses but also developing strong mechanisms foraccountability through civil society and the media, andsustaining the national consensus that has emerged thatreforms must be implemented. The new Caretaker Government(CTG) has started this process in earnest and is to becommended for initiating actions in rebuilding core publicinstitutions including the Anticorruption Commission (ACC).A multi-faceted approach is required to overcomeBangladesh's weaknesses and failures in governance, onewhich this note does not address in detail. The focus ofthis note is on strengthening anticorruption initiatives.
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