Beyond reform on paper

There is value in documentation, especially in moments of political flux. The interim government’s decision to record reform steps -- no matter how technical, incremental, or seemingly minor -- signals seriousness about institutional change. In countries emerging from long periods of centralised power, reform often fails not for lack of ideas but for lack of continuity and memory. This reform compendium is therefore more than a report; it is a ledger of intent and an invitation to continuity. In a country where reform often resets with every change of government, that alone is a non-trivial achievement.

WHERE REFORM ADVANCES -- AND WHERE IT SLOWS

The cross-cutting idea across sectors is clear: to replace arbitrariness with rules, discretion with process, and political loyalty with institutional accountability. Nowhere is this more evident than in governance reforms. Judicial appointments insulated from executive whim, criminal procedure safeguards against arbitrary arrest, separation of civil and criminal courts, digitisation of bail and case management, and online access to land and police services all point to a deliberate effort to reset the citizen-state relationship. These reforms alter incentives, redistribute power within institutions, and in some cases directly reduce opportunities for rent extraction. Importantly, several -- online GD registration, bail bond software, digitised attestation -- have already crossed the threshold from law to lived experience.

Public finance and planning reforms reveal a different dynamic: strong technical intent confronting political gravity. Audit reform, tax expenditure controls, customs automation, and social protection rationalisation reflect a serious effort to restore fiscal credibility and curb discretionary privilege. The emphasis on transparency -- particularly in auditing and social spending -- addresses long-standing trust deficits. Yet this is also where reform momentum visibly slows. The attempted separation of revenue policy from revenue administration illustrates the problem. The logic is sound and the precedent well established, but resistance from within the system has forced pauses and revisions. This reflects a recurring pattern in fiscal reform: technical consensus collides with institutional self-preservation. Public finance reform, more than most sectors, creates identifiable losers early and beneficiaries later -- a mismatch that complicates last-mile delivery.

Banking and financial sector reforms sit in a similar space. The legal architecture for resolution, solvency, and insurance supervision has been strengthened. These are foundational reforms, essential for stability but largely invisible in normal times. Their real test comes not at enactment but at enforcement -- when weak or politically connected institutions must be resolved, merged, or disciplined. If resolution frameworks are not applied when stress emerges, especially to influential actors, the credibility gains from these reforms will evaporate quickly.

Energy and infrastructure reforms reflect a cautious, institution-first approach. The focus is on governance, planning, and regulatory correction rather than headline projects. While sensible in a constrained transition period, this also means tangible improvements -- lower costs, better reliability, faster execution -- remain distant. The relevance of reform in this sector is unquestionable, but the gap between institutional adjustment and household-level impact is still wide. Absent are hard decisions on pricing, contract renegotiation, or sectoral restructuring -- choices that would immediately surface distributional conflict.

Trade reform stands out as an exception. Automation through the Bangladesh Single Window, customs digitisation, bonded warehouse reform, and the introduction of commercial courts combine clarity of purpose with operational specificity. The result is measurable improvement: faster clearance, fewer interfaces, and greater predictability. While adjustment challenges remain for smaller traders, this is among the clearest cases of reform translating into real economic gains within a short time horizon.

Industry, employment, and business regulation reforms expose the widest gap between ambition and material change. The reform record leans heavily toward labour process improvements -- expanded labour courts, alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, upgraded inspection systems, and proposed amendments to the Bangladesh Labour Act (BLA) -- while leaving deeper questions of industrial competitiveness largely untouched. This is not to dismiss the intrinsic value of stronger labour protections or safer workplaces. However, even the much-cited BLA amendments and the prospective ratification of additional ILO conventions are best understood as defensive reforms: they restore international credibility and manage compliance pressure more than they rewire how firms invest, scale, innovate, or compete.

On industry itself -- productivity growth, technology upgrading, access to finance, competition policy, exit of non-viable firms, or reduction of policy-driven distortions -- the reform agenda remains thin. Many measures are procedural or presentational, improving documentation or dispute resolution without materially altering incentives. In business regulation, digitisation and legal streamlining reduce friction at the margins but do not fundamentally change the political economy of regulation. Rules may be clearer on paper, but enforcement remains uneven. For smaller firms, regulation is still a source of uncertainty; for larger or better-connected firms, it remains negotiable.

The last-mile challenge here is therefore not legal drafting or international alignment, but institutional power. Labour law amendments and ILO ratifications will matter only if inspectors are insulated, penalties are applied consistently, and large firms face the same discipline as small ones. Without that shift, these reforms risk becoming compliance theatre -- technically correct, internationally legible, and domestically safe, yet insufficient to transform industrial outcomes or employment quality at scale.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF MAKING REFORM STICK

The overarching lesson from this reform record is that design is not the binding constraint. Political economy is. The most difficult reforms are precisely those that threaten entrenched interests. Bangladesh’s recent experience with stalled or softened initiatives on revenue authority separation, port container terminal leasing, bank mergers, and central bank reform underscores a general truth: losers do not passively accept reform; they organise against it.

Reform, therefore, requires a political game plan, not just technical design. Anticipating resistance, sequencing change, and managing pushback must be treated as core reform tasks, not implementation details. Transparency helps, but it rarely shifts incentives on its own. Reformers must identify in advance who stands to lose, how those actors are likely to resist, and which counter-coalitions can be mobilised in response. Sometimes this means compensating losers; sometimes isolating them; often moving faster than opposition can coalesce.

This is where the next elected government can do things differently. The real value of this reform compendium is not that it closes a chapter, but that it opens a playbook. It shows where reforms advanced when political cover existed, and where they slowed when vested interests pushed back. A future government that treats this record as a tactical guide -- rather than a ceremonial handover -- can lower the cost of continuity, raise the cost of reversal, and plan reform offensives with eyes wide open. If it succeeds, reform will no longer be something that merely survives elections; it will be something that survives its first serious confrontation with power.

The writer is a former lead economist of the World Bank’s Dhaka office.