Bangladesh’s per capita Gross National Income (GNI) has jumped more than 11.88 percent to $2,326 (nominal) next fiscal year from $2,079 of the outgoing fiscal, according to budget document figures.
The GNI means total income of a country's residents, businesses and non-residents abroad while Gross Domestic Product (GDP) takes into account domestic production only. The GNI per capita is highly associated with the quality of life of citizens.
Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal has placed the next fiscal budget in the national parliament (Thursday) today.
According to the finance division, the ministry usually makes such projection which is one of the major criteria to obtain middle-income country status.
Asked how they can project such high per capita growth during Covid-19 the outbreak, an official of finance division said the pandemic could not hit hard the country’s agriculture sector despite disruption to transportation.
“We have low fiscal growth this time due to the pandemic, but the next year it will be above 8 percent,” he said.
The country needs to continue this growth rate to join the middle-income group of countries by 2021 -- the 50th anniversary of its independence added the official.
Last April, the World Bank predicted that Bangladesh’s GDP growth would plunge to 2.0–3.0 percent in the 2019-20 fiscal year amid the declining garment exports, lower private investment growth and broader disruptions caused by the Covid-19 havoc.
But Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal disagreed with the World Bank's forecast, saying the country’s GDP cannot crash-land since the economy was on a strong footing except for export growth during the first eight and a half months till March 15.
The global economy, no doubt, is in bad shape, but it does not mean Bangladesh's economy will crash-land to the level of WB projection, the minister added.
However, economist and finance adviser to a past caretaker government Dr AB Mirza Azizul Islam said the projection of per capital growth next fiscal during the pandemic is unrealistic.
Next fiscal, nominal GDP may be 6 percent; but if you deduct inflation rate, growth rate may be even lower, he said adding that the per capita income would definitely go down compared to the outgoing one.
If the government shows a rosy picture to the world, it might create hindrance to accessing foreign funds, warned Mirza Azizul Islam.
According to the World Bank, rapid growth enabled Bangladesh to reach the lower middle-income country status in 2015. In 2018, Bangladesh fulfilled all three eligibility criteria for graduation from the UN’s Least Developed Countries (LDC) list and is on track for graduation in 2024.
