The seventh five-year development plan is set to be placed before the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) today for its approval.
The plan was already presented to the prime minister and finalised after taking opinions and views from experts and stakeholders.
The implementation of the plan, which targets 8% GDP growth in 2020, will begin next year. The country’s economic growth has remained stuck within 6% for a decade.
Early this fiscal year the General Economic Division started framing the seventh Five-Year Plan after the end of sixth Five-Year Plan on June 30.
Under the plan, the country will need to invest Tk31.9tn to execute the plan to accelerate economic growth.
Some Tk28.85tn or 90.4% of the total required investment has been projected to come from domestic resources while Tk3.05tn or 9.6% from external sources.
Of the domestic resources, the government is expected to invest Tk7,252bn and the private sector Tk24.65tn.
The government also aims to raise the investment-GDP ratio to 34% from the current 29%.
A total of 13.2m jobs at home and abroad will be created for the Bangladeshis in next five years.
Under the plan, 12,584 megawatts of electricity will be generated in five years, 61% of which will come from the public sector and 39% from the private sector.
The contribution of agriculture to the GDP will be brought down to 12.99% in 2020 from 16.1% in 2014, according to the plan.
The share of industrial sector will increase from 27.6% to 33% by 2020, while that of the service sector will drop to 54.1% from the existing 56.3%. The export target has been set at $55.1bn and remittance at $25.39bn in 2020.
The plans also include bringing down the extreme poverty to 8.9% from 12.9% and poverty to 15% from 24.8% in five years.
The target has been set to raise the revenue-GDP ratio to over 16% from around 10% now. The tax-GDP ratio in Bangladesh is one of the poorest in South Asia.
According to the General Economic Division’s progress report on sixth Five-Year Plan, the investment slowdown might lead to failure to achieve the average GDP growth rate above 7% over the remaining period of the plan.
Bangladesh launched first Five-Year Plan in 1973. The second Five-Year Plan was formulated in 1980, third in 1985, fourth in 1990, fifth in 1997 and sixth in 2011.
