The Seventh Five Year Plan should be concentrated on infrastructural development, resource mobilisation and building skilled human resources towards achieving the goal of middle-income country, economists said yesterday.
They also emphasised the need for ensuring good governance and transparency to materialise the development agendas, reports BSS.
The economists, who are the teachers of Economics Department of Dhaka University, passed recommendations at a view exchange meeting that was organised to formulate the 7th Five Year Plan (2016-2020) at the NEC conference room in the city’s Sher-e-Bangla Nagar.
General Economics Division (GED) of the Planning Commission hosted the meeting which was attended by Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal as the chief guest. GED member Prof Shamsul Alam presented a draft outline of the plan.
Stressing the importance of ensuring proper infrastructural development, Prof Dr Momtaz Uddin Ahmed said current investment ratio to GDP is now hovering around 27.5% and efforts should be made in the 7th Plan to raise it to 35%-40%. Citing some sorts of mismanagement at the State-owned commercial banks and at the state-owned enterprises, he said the government cannot continue to incur a heavy loss every year through operation of state-owned enterprises as these could be privatised through offloading shares.
Prof Nazma Begum said transparency and good governance seem to be a big problem towards inclusive growth and if these can be ensured, the country will be able to fare much better.
Prof Dr Shafique Uz Zaman said the upcoming challenge for Bangladesh is the energy resources although there have been frequent talks and emphasis on renewable energy.
Expressing concern over the rise in educated unemployment rate, Prof Barket E Khuda said every year some two million people enter the job market of which half a million remains unemployed. “This also raises the overall cumulative educated unemployment rate,” he added. M Ali Taslim, chairman of Dhaka University’s Economics Department, said the 7th Plan has to be undertaken considering infrastructural problem, political and governance issues while real impetus of growth should have to come from education and skill development.
