A delegation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been satisfied with the progress of implementing the terms given to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS).
The IMF team expressed this satisfaction in a meeting with the BBS held on Tuesday at the BBS office in Dhaka’s Agargaon.
In the meeting, the IMF wants to know the updated data on inflation (Consumer Price Index), GDP (Gross Domestic Product), and quarterly GDP data instead of the traditional method.
The BBS informed the IMF about these issues in the meeting. The IMF delegation also sought consistent data on Bangladesh's growth in the last 50 years since independence, sources said.
BBS Director General (DG) Md Matiar Rahman told UNB that the IMF wanted to know the progress of moving to a new method of inflation.
“The way we calculate inflation is no longer doing it this way, it is changing. Around 95 per cent of countries measure inflation using the IMF's Mixed Method, Bangladesh will follow the new method,” he said.
In the new price inflation, food items will be 263 instead of 153. 720 products. They (the IMF team) expressed satisfaction knowing the progress of the matters, the BBS DG said.
Almost every country in the world publishes their GDP figures on a quarterly basis. Bangladesh does it once a year. There are also examples in the country of taking one and a half to two years to reveal the real GDP if it is on the downward side. Again, the work that the BBS is supposed to do is often done by the finance ministry.
Regarding the quarterly GDP, Matiar said the government will publish the data on GDP four times a year. But it will start in the 2024 calendar year. The work on the data has progressed, he said.
