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Bangladesh GDP will fall - World Bank
After years of steady growth of over 6 per cent, Bangladesh's GDP growth might come down to 4.8 per cent despite the government projection of 6.5 in the current fiscal, the World Bank has said.
- By Anisur Rahman, Correspondent
- Published: 19:59 November 28, 2008
Dhaka: After years of steady growth of over 6 per cent, Bangladesh's GDP growth might come down to 4.8 per cent despite the government projection of 6.5 in the current fiscal, the World Bank has said.
The World Bank fears that the country's main export-earning readymade garments sector and remittance inflow are likely to suffer due to the global financial crisis.
"The impact of the crisis will be much clearer after the next three months," it warned, and asked Bangla-desh to outline contingency measures such as providing government assistance.
The warning came at a press briefing on the global financial crisis and its likely impact on Bangladesh at its Dhaka office on Wednesday.
"We don't know what will happen in the Christmas season," the bank's chief economist Vinaya Swaroop said in the key-note presentation at the briefing, also joined by its country director, Xian Zhu.
"Three months from now, the picture may look very different.
"Bangladesh has to remain watchful, particularly the government, civil society and the media."
Finance adviser of the interim government, A.B. Mirza Azizul Islam, later however rejected the World Bank projection on GDP, saying, "I don't know how they made the estimate. However, I do not agree with them in any way."
"Until now the indicators - export, remittance, inflation, credit growth - all are positive," he said. "Therefore, there is no probability of GDP growth being as low as 4.8 per cent.
"Even recently, the IMF projected GDP growth to be 5.5 per cent."
Integration
Several experts and fin-ancial analysts, including Bangladesh Bank, earlier said Bangladesh was likely to evade the impact of the global recession as the South Asian nation's economy was not heavily integrated with the major world economies.
Businesses, however, rejected the idea, saying heavily import-dependent and export-oriented, Bangladesh's economy was likely to suffer a setback.
"Bangladesh did not have any impact from the first round of the global financial crisis because of lack of integration but it is integrated with the world economy in exports and remittance," Swaroop said.
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