Hasina era growth was debt fuelled.
It is complicated matter.
But the problem that Yunus et al have inherited is that forex level is 18 billion USD and the external debt (split about 75% pubic and 25% private) is about 100+ billion USD.
It is about 18% coverage. This means a pretty heavy traffic snarl for new capital outlay (where most of this debt originates from to begin with).
For comparison, India has about 100% coverage (forex and external debt both around 650 billion USD). Pakistan just before IMF bailout had coverage around 7% (8 billion forex and 120 billion external debt iirc)....and with IMF bailout has around 10%+ now.
Only way for BD is to improve its institutional credibility to have better pools of solvency to earn better credit rating for its govt bonds (both those in USD and Taka) etc.
Maybe next year when Yunus admin has charted more ground and time and the white paper is released (regarding the Hasina admin data problems etc).
You have to get these things right (that can be measured objectively + directly, given intrinsic vetting by entities outside BD related to trade, investment, finance flows) inside out, for GDP to matter and gain credibility after it organically...especially for BD's population size and investment trajectory needs. It is precisely the reason BD suffered bad credit rating (and this % of traffic snarl thats going to play out for a while now) and needed to price its govt bonds at higher rates than would otherwise have been needed.....regd whatever the real GDP ramp was under Hasina tenure (versus whatever % fluff on top that BD will have to credibly establish going forward to get better investor and loan-inflow sentiment again).
Obviously her tenure had mix of policies + management, good and bad. BD can do proper hindsight analysis and take the positives and diminish the negatives under Yunus hopefully and subsequent tenures following him, but they need proper disciplined technocratic teams here.
All the talk of heavy capital outlay for longer term regd energy (nuclear power plants, grid expansion with India/Bhutan/Nepal, local powerplants) is longer term issue after better setting in trust (for investors both inside and outside, outside especially since world is capital surplus compared to BD) is achieved.
i.e can Yunus assign a team to work with BD RMG corporates to look into why BD has not been able to over last say 10 years taken deeper bite into China's RMG exports....China is still exporting 100+ billion with labour wages much higher than BD.
Each year BD has maybe shifted a cpl billion to itself....for RMG export (and remittance) based country for current account.... this is nowhere near adequate especially to then finance/attract investment into other sectors outside RMG.
Only if you analyse and understand how to pull significant 10+ billion chunks of that each couple years (given BD already has foot in RMG door competitiveness), i.e address the capital and other chokepoints.....will BD achieve actual demand pull for things like higher electric energy consumption to need this thread subject in proper way in first place....rather than get into another capital sink first, putting cart before donkey "as usual in developing world, govt brochurism + bureaucratic busybodyism", white elephant stuff that got say SL, Pak et al. into major trouble....i.e not sufficient tuning into even rest of 10% pyramid top regd genuine enterprise needs/analysis from their end to make proper policy and outlay.
BD industrialisation has not been adequate past the BAL brochures, it tells in export figures both scale and composition....and the results in the forex now (i.e the capital cost trajectory objectively being out of step to BD's inelastic RMG+remit earning reliance in current account).
Yunus and team he assembles have to do lot of hard work to cultivating genuine institutional architecture for BD long term.
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