DHAKA, July 6: Top Bangladesh bureaucrats and business leaders on Tuesday traded sharp verbal exchanges over corruption and inefficiency in each other’s closet. Business leaders said sections of government officials and employees held a significant share of black money. But senior government officials said: It takes two to tango.

The bureaucrats also ruled out the business leaders’ claim that officials of the ‘post-CSP - Pakistan Civil Service - cadres were inefficient. The CSP officials were both good and bad. There are a number of government officials, including some young ones, who are doing very well, said Kamaluddin Siddiqui, the principal secretary to the prime minister’s office (PMO). There is no doubt that efficiency of bureaucrats has gone down, but it is mainly due to political interference, he said while speaking at a luncheon meeting of the American Chamber of Commerce in Bangladesh at the Sheraton Hotel in Dhaka.

Mr Siddiqui said that people joining the civil service knew well about the low pay structure and must accommodate their needs within their means as no one forces them to join. One in civil service should not compare oneself with one’s peers with high salaries and perks in the non-government sectors, he said, adding, the civil servants must possess professionalism and patriotism.

Kamal, however, admitted that there ‘are some unscrupulous civil servants’. Taking part in the discussion, energy secretary A.A.M. Nasiruddin said that bureaucrats alone were not responsible for corruption and inefficiency.

Government officials have to work under some strict rules and regulations and you [businessmen] cannot expect them to deliver things as fast as you may do in the private sector, the secretary said. He also said the government officials and employees were not the only ones corrupt, and that they should not be squarely blamed for the corruption since the businessmen also contribute to the process.

Earlier, in his introductory remark, the president of Amcham, Aftab-ul-Islam, said black money played a significant role in the countrys economy, depriving the government of revenues and making business difficult for honest people.

It is not that businessmen alone possess black money; dishonest government officials and employees also have a share in it, the Amcham president observed. There are hundreds of customs officers, meter readers, land registration officers, estate officers and police inspectors who have a lion’s share of the underground economy. Aftab said bribes paid to officials and employees of 25 service sectors agencies accounted for roughly two per cent of the countrys GDP.