Home ›› 04 Jan 2022 ›› Opinion
We have celebrated the golden jubilee of independence and victory in 2021 under the leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the daughter of Bangabandhu. Let a non-communal, self-reliant and poverty-free Bangladesh be built on the spirit and ideology of the Liberation War.
The transformation of Bangladesh in 50 years is praise-worthy. Bangladesh was devastated during the war in 1971.We had to begin everything from the scratch. Per capita income, exports, expatriate income — everything was at a low level. From there the country has slowly come out. However, great progress has been made in the last 12 years. Recently, we have seen in the economic review of 11-12 countries in Asia, Bangladesh has recently added 1 percent GDP growth every five years. Asian countries have been achieving the highest GDP growth for two-three years. Of course, the biggest contributors are exports, remittances and agriculture. The agricultural sector has diversified. As a result, we have become self-sufficient in food. But there are some challenges. Dependence on the RMG sector must be reduced. There is a need to diversify products and expand new markets. Although remittances are high, it is lower than many neighboring countries. It needs to be increased.
The epic transformation created by the labour of these heroes is becoming an example of development to the world. After independence, the budget of only 786 crore taka has increased 768 times and now it is 6 lakh 3 thousand crore. According to the data, the ‘bottomless basket’ of former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is now overflowing with success stories.
The latest report from Wealth-X, a US think tank, says it’s not just GDP growth; Bangladesh also tops the world in terms growth of very rich people. Bangladesh is ahead of many countries in the world in terms of increasing the number of rich people including America, Canada, England, Japan, Hong Kong, China and India. In the last decade, the number of rich people in Bangladesh has increased at an average rate of 14.3 per cent annually with a net worth of more than 5 million USD.
In 1971, the total crop production was 1 crore tons. After 50 years there are about 170 million people in Bangladesh. Crop production has reached 40 million tons. Bangladesh is now almost self-sufficient in food. Overcoming all obstacles, the heart and soul of the farmer is triumphant in almost all sub-sectors of agriculture through hard work and sweat. For 50 years, working people have laid the foundation of the country’s economy by pushing the wheel of prosperity from behind. With hundreds of adversities, they have made the progress of Bangladesh’s garment sector irresistible. The red-green flag is hoisted at the top of the world. About 10 million expatriates by sending almost the entire income of their labour to the country, have taken Bangladesh a long way on the path of development.
An analysis of data from the government’s planning commission, domestic and foreign research institutes, show that the country that was born on the rubble in 1971, 50 years later, is now one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. Just a few months ago, Henry Kissinger himself advised President Biden to follow the Bangladesh model in poverty alleviation and women’s empowerment in The New York Times. Positive progress has been made in almost all of the eight goals of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Now the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs is moving forward. For almost a decade, the world’s top agencies and various development partners, especially the World Bank, IMF, ADB, JICA, Goldman Sachs, Wall Street Journal, HSBC, Citibank NA, PWC have termed Bangladesh by various names including Diamond, Emerging Tiger, Next Eleven. Consistently high GDP growth, poverty alleviation, education, infrastructural development, reserves, remittances or expatriate income, exports, per capita income, life expectancy, social security and other major indicators of the economy are ahead of many countries in the world including neighboring countries. Bangladesh is now a surprise to development partners.
According to the data, the size of the post-independence annual development program or ADP of only Tk 501 crore has reached Tk 2.25 trillion in the current financial year. The per capita income of 130 at that time has now exceeded 2554 dollars. At a time when GDP growth was below 3 percent, it has now reached 8 percent. In the year after independence, export of goods was worth only US 348.4 million increased 111 times in five decades to 3.85 billion. Expatriate income, which was nominal 50 years ago, has reached 25 billion a year. Exports and expatriate revenues have surpassed the foreign exchange reserves of 48 billion USD.
Bangladesh is far ahead of India and Pakistan in almost all social and cultural indicators. Bangladesh’s achievements in all indicators such as women’s education, population growth rate, life expectancy, trade deficit, reduction of poverty and extreme poverty, access to safe drinking water, housing, school enrollment, maternal mortality rate, infant mortality rate are universally recognized. So much for that success; Progress, it can be said that the three main sectors of the economy, agriculture, exports and expatriate income are being relied upon to build capacity in all other directions.
The farmers of Bangladesh, despite facing all kinds of natural calamities including storms, tidal surges, floods and droughts, have maintained the advancement of agriculture robustly. At present, more than 47 per cent of the total workforce in Bangladesh is engaged in agriculture. By using all kinds of agricultural inputs including improved seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, they have been able to produce several times more crops even after the depletion of land. After independence, 10 per cent of the country’s land was under high-yielding crops. Now it has exceeded 90 percent. 10 percent of the land was under irrigation, now it is 80 percent. As a result, the production of paddy has increased more than three times, wheat twice, vegetables five times and maize ten times. At present Bangladesh ranks third in the world in rice production, third in vegetable production, third in freshwater fish production in open water, seventh in mango production, seventh in potato production and eighth in guava production. Enviable success in poultry and dairy. All this has been made possible by the hard work of the farmers.
The garment sector is leading the country from a least developed to a developing country. About 4 million workers in this sector are working at relatively low wages, leading the world in competitiveness. As a result, Bangladesh is the world’s top garment exporter after China. The sector was not in the list of export earnings 50 years ago, but in the 2018-19 financial year, from this sector, 3 thousand 413 crore dollars came to the country, the amount of which is 2 lakh 90 thousand 105 crore in the domestic currency. Although exports declined slightly in the last financial year due to Corona’, 83 per cent of the total export earnings were in readymade garments.
Over the last 50 years, the garment sector has changed the face of the country’s export earnings. Export earnings have increased 96 times in five decades. The sector is leading the way in the prosperity of Bangladesh with the employment of rural men and women, socio-economic empowerment of women and expansion of numerous allied industries. Bangladesh also tops the list of eco-friendly factories in the world. What could be a bigger achievement in 50 years of independence! The sector is leading the world market from the front by efficiently combining price, quality and lead time. The foreign exchange earned in this sector has been continuously increasing the reserves of the Bangladesh Bank.
Apart from this, the sector which has been playing a vital role in making Bangladesh prosperous and developed is expatriate income. Expatriates leave their families and loved ones and work hard day and night to become expatriates and
