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In his speech, the President also reiterated his call to all international organizations and countries, including the United Nations, to provide the necessary assistance to ensure the safe and dignified repatriation of one million Rohingya refugees, who took shelter in Bangladesh territory being the worst victims of the military atrocities in their Rakhine state homeland in neigbouring Myanmar.
He said the Bengali nation needs to forge unwavering people’s unity, specially the pro-liberation forces to build exploitation free “Sonar Bangla” (Golden Bangla) as envisioned by the Father of the Nation by building a strong resistance against communalism, discrimination, intolerance and terrorism.
The President observed that under the strong and farsighted leadership of Bangabandhu’s worthy successor, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh has risen to the status of a lower-middle-income country by achieving most of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015.
“In 2018, Bangladesh, for the first time, has fulfilled all the conditions to achieve a developing country status from a least developed country,” he mentioned.
Bangladesh has achieved unprecedented success in various indicators of socio-economic development indices, the President said, adding that Bangladesh is now far ahead of the neighboring countries and today Bangladesh is the fastest growing country in Asia.
Abdul Hamid said after achieving more than 6 percent growth for three consecutive years, the growth in 2018-19 fiscal year stood at 7.1 percent.
“The growth target for the 2019-20 fiscal year was set at 8.2 percent. But due to the Corona virus epidemic, the growth was 5.24 percent”, he said.
The President said the per capita income of the people has risen to about US $2064 and the foreign exchange reserves are now above 41 billion US dollars. At the time of country’s independence, the average life expectancy was 47, but now it is over 72 years.
The number of primary school-going kids is about cent percent while the literacy rate has increased to 74.7 percent and infant and maternal mortality rates have declined, he pointed out.
Although the amount of agricultural land has been gradually reducing, President Hamid said, “We are self-sufficient in food production today. The poverty rate has come down to 20.5 percent in 2019 which was 40.0 percent in 2005,” he said.
With the aim of building the ‘Sonar Bangla’ as per Bangabandhu’s dream, President Hamid said the government has adopted a multi-dimensional action plan entitled ‘Vision-2041’.
The main objective of the incumbent government’s development ‘Vision 2041’ is to build a hunger-and-poverty-free, developed and prosperous Bangladesh, ending the extreme poverty by 2031, rising to the status of an upper-middle-income country, and becoming a high-income country by 2041 with eradicating poverty and per capita income of more than 12,500 US dollar, he added.
Giving a salient feature of the incumbent government’s development goals, the President said it is necessary to increase the GDP growth to 9 percent in the period of 2021-2041. Simultaneously, it has to ensure nutrition and food security, massive industrialization, economic integration, urbanization, cent percent electrification, energy diversification, climate change impact and building a merit-based society.
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