The government should focus on inclusive growth to arrest the rising inequality and bring down the unemployment rate, analysts said yesterday.
“If the issues are not addressed properly there would be an explosion in socioeconomic stability,” said Selim Jahan, an economist and former director of Human Development Report Department of UNDP.
In many cases, despite achieving a good GDP growth employment opportunities are not on the rise. Subsequently, he advised the government to allocate a fund to create jobs for the poor.
“Growth should be ensured by way of increasing employment opportunities,” Jahan said at a seminar styled ‘Economic Woes and Governance Challenge’, organised yesterday by the Centre for Governance Studies at the capital’s Brac Centre Inn. Bangladesh’s youth unemployment rate is 9.45 percent, which is the highest in South Asia, said Rashed Al Mahmud Titumir, a professor at the Dhaka University’s Development Studies department.
Furthermore, growth in real income decreased by three percentage points in 2017 than in the previous two years, he said.
Between 2005 and 2010, poverty reduced at the rate of 1.7 percent every year. And between 2011 and 2016, the rate came down to 1.2 percent.
“The burning question is: where has all the output from GDP growth gone?”
Recently, Arvind Subramanian, a former chief economic adviser to the Indian government, unearthed that the actual GDP growth of India between fiscals 2011-12 and 2016-17 was two percentage points less than what the government had declared, he said.
“A lower GDP growth will also be found here if the same research is carried out,” Titumir added.
An autonomous organisation should be set up to analyse the domestic data as questions have been raised over the accuracy of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, said Abu Ahmed, a former chairman of Dhaka University’s economics department.
The government is aware of the problems prevailing in the banking sector, said
Planning Minister MA Mannan said the government is open to enhancing BBS’s capacity.
“We will give attention to the BBS. If anyone shows interest in working on the BBS we will welcome them.”
The government is under pressure to maintain the growth momentum of the past 10 years.
“This is not an easy task,” he added.
In 2009, the GDP growth was nearly 7 percent and the rate has yet to rise as expected, said Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury, a former commerce minister.
The latest GDP growth has become ineffective because of its failure to lift the living standards of people, said Chowdhury, also a member of the standing committee of Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
The country’s domestic and foreign direct investment have been static for a long while now, he added.
M Hafizuddin Khan, a former adviser to a caretaker government, said the bank and financial institutions division has created all sorts of problems for the banking sector.
“The officials of the central bank have forgotten their function and the Bangladesh Association of Banks, an organisation of private banks’ sponsors, determined the interest rate on both lending and deposit, which is unusual in the country’s history,” he added.
Ataur Rahman, chairman of the Centre for Governance Studies; Muhammad Abdul Majid, a former chairman of the National Board of Revenue; Nazneen Ahmed, senior research fellow of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies; and Muhammad Parvez Emdad, a former lead economist of the Asian Development Bank, spoke among others.
News Courtesy: https://www.thedailystar.net