Published in The Daily Star on Sunday, 29 January 2018
Star Business Report
The Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) will celebrate the silver jubilee of its operations in Bangladesh this year.
The board of trustees of the private think-tank shared the info at its 50th meeting on January 20, CPD said in a statement.
To mark the occasion, the centre will also organise the seventh South Asian Regional Meeting of the Think Tank Initiative, an annual lecture, a daylong programme on Bangladesh’s graduation from the least developed countries category and a national youth conference.
The board recommended strengthening of outreach efforts of the organisation, emphasising research quality and capacity building and diversifying the portfolio of communication activities to meet emerging challenges in policy environment. The trustees lauded CPD’s performance at national, regional and global levels between August and December 2017, according to the statement.
The board approved the CPD’s annual accounts for 2017 and the budget for 2018 and endorsed the annual plan for research, dialogues and publications.
Concurrent issues to be dealt with include the analysis of macroeconomic performance, inclusive growth and employment, apparel sector restructuring, Southern Voice Report on state of the sustainable development goals, and enhancing participation of community-based organisations and civil society organisations in democratic governance in Bangladesh.
Presided over by Prof Rehman Sobhan, chairman of CPD, the meeting was attended by Trustees Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, chairperson of Brac; M Syeduzzaman, former finance minister; Sultana Kamal, a human rights activist; Rasheda K Choudhury, executive director of the CAMPE; Syed Manzoorul Islam, a professor of English at Dhaka University; Shahdeen Malik, a lawyer of the Supreme Court; Debapriya Bhattacharya, distinguished fellow of CPD, and Fahmida Khatun, executive director.