Dhaka slashes GDP to 11-year low of 5.2% for 2019-20

09 May '20

2 min read

Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, Bangladesh recently revised downward the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) to a provisional 5.2 per cent in fiscal 2019-20, which ends on June 30. The revised projection is an 11-year low as the country witnessed 5.05 per cent growth in 2008-09 due to the anti-corruption crackdown by the military-backed caretaker government.

The revision is also 3 percentage point less than the original GDP projection of 8.2 per cent made by finance minister AHM Mustafa Kamal in his first budget in parliament last June.

Kamal expects an economic turnaround in the next fiscal with 8.2 per cent GDP projection, according to a newspaper report in the country.

The revised growth rate of 5.2 per cent is much higher than the below 3 per cent projections made by International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The Economist Intelligence Unit had earlier said that Bangladesh’s GDP growth would slow down to 3.5 per cent in this fiscal due to preventive measures taken by the government to curtail the movement of people to check the spread of the virus since March 26.

Income by the readymade garments sector, which accounts for over 80 per cent of the country’s exports and earned $40 billion last year, reportedly declined by 84.86 per cent to $ 366.58 million in April compared to $2.42 billion during the same month of the last fiscal.

Inflow of remittance dropped to a three-year low of $1.08 billion in April. The April remittance was the lowest since May 2017, when the country received $1.077 billion in remittance.

The average growth in revenue in the last five fiscals has been 13.16 per cent, but economists doubt whether the government can post even 1 or 2 per cent revenue growth in this fiscal.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)

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