Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics has downsized the country’s GDP growth to 6.03% in the outgoing fiscal year 2012-13 from the original target of 7.2%.
BBS Joint Director Abul Kalam Azad confirmed the latest estimation Friday, saying the bureau had also finalised the previous fiscal year’s growth rate at 6.23% instead of the estimated 6.32%.
The government set 7.2% GDP growth for the current fiscal year in a bid to become a middle-income country by 2021.
The World Bank in its latest development outlook has cut Bangladesh’s GDP growth prospect to 5.8%, slashing it by 1.4 percentage points from the government’s target.
The estimation by the International Monetary Fund for the current fiscal year is only 6%.
Economist Rashed Al Mahmud Titumir of Dhaka University, who is also the team leader of Unnayan Onneshan, told the Dhaka Tribune that the GDP growth had declined for consecutive three fiscal years because of the government’s fiscal and monetary policies.
Contraction of monetary policies has dried up private sector investment; the government has also failed to attract big investment through public-private partnership, which was not carried out because of a lack of law and regulation, he said.
