Bangladesh ahead of India, Pakistan in IMF index

Bangladesh showed stable and qualitative improvement in major economic indicators last year in terms of inclusive development index (IDI) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Among 74 emerging economies, Bangladesh secured the 34th position in the IMF’s annual index, which reflects quality of economic performance in a particular country.

In the index, Bangladesh also performed far better than India (ranked 62), Pakistan (ranked 52) and Sri Lanka (ranked 40).

The index also includes 29 developed economies, headed by Norway. Iceland, Luxemburg, Switzerland and Denmark followed the Scandinavian state on the top when Greece, Portugal, Italy, Spain and Israel were placed at the bottom five.

Lithuania topped the index for the emerging economies, followed by Hungary, Azerbaijan, Latvia and Poland. Mozambique, Lesotho, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Egypt were among the bottom five.

Compared to last year, Bangladesh advanced two notches to the 34th from previous 36th position, with maintaining an overall score of around 4 based on a 1-7 scale where 1 indicates worst and 7 best.

The IDI is an annual assessment of 103 countries’ economic performance that measures how countries perform on eleven dimensions of economic progress in addition to GDP.

These are employment, labour productivity, household income, per capita income, net savings, life expectancy, poverty rate, wealth distribution, public debt and eco-friendly initiatives.

The IDI has been developed to measure countries’ sustained and inclusive economic progress and recommends future strategy to address the financial disadvantages that the assessed countries are facing or will face in the coming years.

The IDI puts Bangladesh among top 20 percent performers for improving savings and wealth distribution while the country was placed in middle of the 103 nations for the other 10 indicators.

According to Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), Bangladesh attained 7.28 percent GDP growth last financial year when government raised the fiscal target to 7.4 per cent for the current 2017-18 (FY18).

The per capita income also rose to $1,610 in the FY 2016-17 when the inflation was stable around 5.0 per cent.