Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal has defended the GDP growth recently estimated by Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) for the outgoing fiscal year as he criticised Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) for its analysis on assumption and incomplete data.
“CPD has no complete data. It comes up with analysis on assumption. In many cases, this might be correct or not,” said the minister, in response to a question while briefing on outcome of the meeting with ADB’s new country director for Bangladesh Kazuhiko Higuchi in Dhaka yesterday.
His reaction came a day after the local think tank CPD raising questions about the 6.12% economic growth projected by BBS (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics) for the outgoing fiscal year.
He said it is BBS not CPD that has complete data on GDP. Highlighting some statistics that keep contribution in the GDP growth, Kamal hoped CPD’s confusion will be removed after analysing the data provided by BBS.
Pointing fingers at the CPD’s surprise on service sector growth in the outgoing fiscal year, he said service sector has enough reason to grow. “In the last six months, export grew 19.96%, agriculture sector 3.5% and import 7.5%.”
About the transport sector, the main sub-sector of the service sector, he said growth of bus, truck and auto-rickshaw increased by 2.2%, 5.8% and 9.6% respectively, which has given an impetus on service sector growth.
Fees and commissions in the banking sector has also increased by 13% and 20% this year compared to the previous year, and dearness allowance of government officials and employees also contributed to the GDP growth in this fiscal year, he said.
“Besides, a number of community clinics and registered primary schools have also increased, keeping positive impact on GDP growth.”
According to the CPD, the GDP growth projected by the BBS was shown so high at a time when the economy went through turbulent political stage atmosphere in the first half of the fiscal year 2014.
Many analysts including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank expected the economic growth in FY14 to be between 5.5% and 6% in view of political unrest in the first half of the fiscal year.
The CPD in January 2014 had also predicted that the GDP growth rate in FY14 would be ranging between 5.6% and 5.8%.
CPD had said the BBS estimated that the service sector – worst sufferer during political unrest – grew by 5.8% in FY14 against 5.5% in FY13.
“This is quite surprising that the service sector grew by 0.3% over its previous fiscal when the political field was relatively peaceful,” it said.
The service sector that contributed more than 50% of the total GDP was adversely affected due to restive political programmes in the run up to the national election on January 5 this year, according to the CPD.
