In the aftermath of independence, when Bangladesh was in desperate need of aid for rehabilitation and reconstruction, it took a while for the country to establish a substantial relationship with the World Bank.

An important issue was the sharing of the foreign debt burden (incurred prior to 1971) between Pakistan and Bangladesh. It took some time to resolve this.

Once this was settled, the WB could engage in a substantial manner in Bangladesh.

Starting in 1973, the WB started providing loans for budgetary support, import financing and specific projects in areas such as infrastructure, industry, food production and family planning.

An important instrument was the Import Program Credit. Over the next decade, Bangladesh received 13 such credits.

Initially, these loans did not have many conditionalities attached to them except that the project funds be utilised efficiently.

However, starting in the early 1980s, the WB started attaching certain policy conditionalities to its import programme loans to Bangladesh, replaced later by structural adjustment loans.

This was the time when the WB started advocating for structural adjustment across the developing world.

Its less than satisfactory experience with project loans, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, convinced the WB that certain structural changes were needed in the policy framework of developing countries without which the goal of development will remain unfulfilled.

It attached policy conditions to its lending to help bring about such adjustments.

The conditionalities covered a wide ground including privatisation, import liberalisation, pricing reforms such as removal or reduction of subsidies, improving tax collection, financial sector reforms and improved public financial management.

Many Bangladeshis believe that many, or most, of the conditionalities imposed by the WB have been inappropriate and possibly harmful for the country.

They believe that successive governments have accepted these conditions due to their undue dependence on the donors and their inability, or lack of inclination, to push back on donor demands.

While valid in some cases, by and large such concerns are misplaced. Let me mention three things.

First, all governments to date have often pushed back, even if to varying degrees, on the positions taken by the donors. They have adopted reforms at their own pace.

Second, donor conditionalities have often reflected the policy intentions of the government. For example, the WB, through its continuous dialogue with the government, was often able to reach agreement with the latter on what policy actions were to be taken or what reforms were to be enacted.

Some of these were then included in the loans as conditions for loan disbursements.

This is reflected in a comment by former Finance Minister Mohammad Syeduzzaman, one of the most experienced Bangladeshi policymakers when it comes to dealing with donors.

In an article titled "Aid and Policy Reforms in Bangladesh", published in the 2004 CPD volume "Revisiting Foreign Aid: A Review of Bangladesh's Development 2003", Syeduzzaman writes about IDA, the soft loan arm of the WB, in the 1980s: "In fact, in many cases IDA staff members picked up on initiatives taken by the government itself to justify a policy-based import credit."

This is a strong indication that many policy initiatives of the government are taken independently even if these later receive support from donors.

My third point is about the impact of policy reforms advocated by the WB. One of the most contentious policy actions asked for by the WB is the closure of the Adamjee Jute Mills.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the WB provided several loans to help modernise the state-owned jute industry. The results were not satisfactory.

The WB then concluded that it will be better for Bangladesh to privatise some jute mills and close the rest.

The most significant example of closure is that of Adamjee Jute Mills. This happened in 2002, leading to a job loss of 26,000.

Many people in Bangladesh were critical of this decision and accused the WB of supporting de-industrialisation of the country.

However, it is not widely known that an export processing zone was subsequently developed on the land of the former Adamjee Jute Mills and that, by mid-2019 (the latest period for which I have data), more than 55,000 people have been employed in the zone. This is double the number of jobs lost when Adamjee closed.

A dynamic economy requires a regular process of reallocation of resources from activities that are no longer profitable to those that are more promising.

The WB's advice to close the Adamjee Jute Mills was in line with this important lesson of economics and the performance of the Adamjee EPZ has vindicated this position.

The WB Group has also played an instrumental role in the development of the economic zones program of the country.

This is a good example of WB Group support for a transformative agenda in a developing country. It is also a good example of how the WB Group can bring together its rich set of instruments, spread across its various parts, in the service of a transformative agenda.

In 2007, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the WB Group, published a report where it argued for a more organised and environmentally friendly industrialisation process in Bangladesh through the establishment of several economic zones in the country.

Drawing upon international good practice, it also argued for the adoption of different types of public-private models in implementing the agenda.

Once the government accepted the arguments and decided to go for an ambitious economic zones program, the IFC helped draft the Economic Zones Act and associated rules and regulations, and supported the establishment and institution building of the Bangladesh Economic Zones Authority.

Later, the WB stepped in with loans to help build the infrastructure in the zones.

Now there is some talk of the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), another arm of the WB Group, coming in with guarantees to encourage foreign investment in these zones.

A good example of how the WB Group can support a country's development agenda with a wide range of instruments, including knowledge, technical assistance and loans.

Going forward, the emphasis will increasingly be on creating the enabling environment for private sector investment, whether domestic or foreign.

This would involve assistance for improving the investment climate, catalysing private foreign investment and de-risking private investment.

While the traditional lending and knowledge work of the WB will remain important, we are likely to see increased engagement of IFC and MIGA in Bangladesh.

In summary, despite some frictions and tensions, the relationship between the Bangladesh government and the WB Group has been largely productive.

Surely there have been many debates over the years between Bangladeshi policy makers and the development partners.

Sometimes, the debates were acrimonious. However, by and large, both parties have had a pragmatic approach for engagement.

More importantly, they often strived to develop a common vocabulary to communicate with each other, trying to understand each other's positions and limitations.

And, when they did find a common vocabulary, as they often did, the deliberations turned out to be productive and the results positive and, at times, even transformative.

The author is a former global lead of the World Bank Group's regulatory reforms and public-private dialogue