Lower economic base is a factor so is lack of foreign borrowing for infrastructure in earlier times. Lack of foreign borrowing is also related to weak revenue collection, as foreign lenders are not very fond of lending money to the govt. whose tax collection is low and struggle ends meet. These things are inter related. Another factor is, then China was not a big lender.
Foreign borrowing for infrastructure development is not sustainable unless our revenue collection ramp up in the coming years. Otherwise we will be in a serious trouble.
Gdp per capita affects how much revenue a government has even if tax collection is low.
China still accounts for less than 10% of BD infrastructure spending even now and so is not a major factor. BD government, JICA, ADB are each larger sources of BD infrastructure spending at this time.
As for whether tax base needs to improve to keep borrowing at the rate that BD plans, well not really.
Currently total BD government revenue is 12% of GDP and so there will be far more "free" money that BD government can devote to debt repayments as the economy grows. Of course as BD gets richer and more people enter the formal economy then tax revenue as proportion of GDP will increase due to more people being in the tax net and also better collection methods with digitisation etc..
There is absolutely nothing to worry about as far as BD ability to service debt is concerned.
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