FY21 GDP growth rate further cut

The government on Sunday decided to further lower the projected growth rate of the country’s gross domestic product for the current 2020–21 fiscal year, from the earlier revised 7.4 per cent to 6.1 per cent.

It also decided to project the next fiscal year’s GDP growth rate at 7.2 per cent due to the Covid pandemic, said Finance Division officials  

The decisions were taken in an online meeting of the coordination council on macro-economy and budget management.

Finance minister AHM Mustafa Kamal chaired the meeting.

On December 30, 2020 the coordination council in its previous meeting made  a downward revision of the originally projected GDP growth rate of 8.2 per cent to 7.4 per cent.

Officials said that the day’s meeting favoured the fresh cut in the GDP growth because of the lower than expected revenue, exports and imports.

The revenue shortfall of the National Board of Revenue stood at Tk 36,842 crore in the July–January period of FY21.

Besides, the country’s export earnings in the July–February period of the current fiscal year fell by 1.45 per cent to $25.86 billion from $26.24 billion in the same period of the previous fiscal year as the global economic activities remained slow due to the Covid pandemic.

In March the World Bank predicted that Bangladesh’s GDP might increase by 3.6per cent in 2020–21 due to a better-than-expected remittance inflow.

The remittance inflow during the July–March period of FY21 rose by 35.06 per cent to $18.6 billion compared with over $13.77 billion in the same period of the last fiscal year.