DHAKA, Nov 14, 2017 (BSS)-Country’s economic growth reached a record 7.28 percent in the current fiscal year 2016-17 (FY17), according to Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS).
The government had set a growth target of 7.2 percent for FY17 fiscal.
“The GDP growth finally stood at 7.28 percent in the last fiscal, the highest ever in the country’s economy,” said Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal while briefing reporters after the ECNEC meeting here today.
Earlier in May this year, the government had determined a provisional growth of 7.24 percent in FY17.
“The full and final statistics will be unveiled in detail on Thursday,” Kamal told reporters.
According to BBS, the gross domestic product (GDP) growth was 7.11 percent with the size of Tk1,732,864 crore and per capita income at $1,465, or Tk118,131.04 in FY16.
He said that the size of the GDP now stands at US$ 250 billion, but it took around 34 years after the War of Independence to lift the country’s GDP size to US$100 billion.
“Considering that, it is a record achievement. In achieving GDP growth we have been able to come out of 6 percent growth circle,” he added.
Apart from Bangladesh, Cambodia and Ethiopia have attained over 7 percent GDP growth in much lesser time among the other countries of the world.
He said as per the Fifth Five Year Plan country’s GDP growth will reach 8 percent by 2020. “But we think that we will be able to achieve this target by 2019,” he said.
“The government has a target to achieve 9 percent GDP growth in 2030 and if we are able to do so, we will be able to turn Bangladesh into a developed country,” Kamal said.
Among the three major sectoral growth, he said that the industry sector achieved the highest growth of 10.22 percent in the last fiscal year (FY17 followed by 6.69 percent by the services sector and 2.97 percent by the agriculture sector.
The planning minister also disclosed partially the inflation statistics for September, which stood at 6.04 percent, slightly higher than the 6.02 percent registered in August.
The inflation statistics included the overall food and non-food items