ZCZC
BSS-27
MANNAN-EVALUATION-PLAN
Mannan for addressing ‘lack of data’
DHAKA, Feb 3, 2019 (BSS) – Planning Minister MA Mannan today underscored the need for addressing the issue of ‘lack of data’ towards monitoring the progress of implementation of various Plans like 7th Five Year Plan and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
“We’ve deficit in availability of data both in quality and quantity … we’ll take the matter to the highest level of the government to move forward. We may undertake reforms in this regard,” he said.
The Planning Minister said this at a consultative meeting on finalizing the mid-term evaluation report on the 7th Five-Year Plan held at the NEC Conference Room in the city’s Sher-e-Bangla Nagar area this afternoon.
Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) under the Planning Ministry usually deals with the data, he said.
General Economics Division (GED) Member of the Planning Commission Prof Dr Shamsul Alam made a power-point presentation on the draft evaluation report.
He highlighted some challenges towards implementation of the 7th Five-Year Plan that includes resource mobilization, unplanned urbanization, utilization of resources, skills development and quality education, LDC graduation, governance challenges and taming inequality and regional disparity.
The total investment under the Plan will be $409.01 billion in constant 2015-16 prices; 90.04 percent of which will be financed from domestic resources and 9.6 percent from the external resources.
According to the presentation, the actual growth rates during the first two years of the 7th FYP surpassed the target.
It said despite various challenges encountered, the growth performance of the industrial sector and manufacturing sector in particular, has been quite impressive.
Due to the attainment of over 7 percent growth rate during the first two years of the 7th FYP, per capita GNI continued to rise to $1,751 in FY2018 from $1,465 from FY2016.
“This impressive per capita income rise pattern suggests that the country is on course to attain the upper middle-income country by 2030,” Shamsul Alam said in his presentation.
Since the growth of Bangladesh is mostly driven by investment and exports, the investment ratio to GDP has reached 31.8 percent in FY2018 whereas the target is 34.4 percent by FY2020.
The participants in the meeting mainly suggested strengthening the operations in fisheries and livestock, SMEs, updating the data, curbing corruption, addressing nutrition, ensuring availability of necessary data, allocating special fund for the lagging areas.
BSS/ASG/GM/BR/1815