GDP growth slows in first quarter of FY2023-24

The GDP growth of the country has slightly decreased in the first quarter (July-September) of the current financial year (FY) 2023-24. The growth was 6.07 per cent, which was 8.76 per cent in the first quarter of the last fiscal year. That means the GDP growth has decreased by 2.69 percentage points.

Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) released this information on Thursday. According to the data, the growth in the first quarter of the current financial year has been lower compared to the last quarter of the last fiscal year (2022-23). The growth in the fourth quarter of FY2022-23 was 6.24 per cent.

Another BBS report said the final GDP growth in the 2022-23 financial year was 5.78 per cent. However, the country's provisional GDP growth rate in the last financial year was 6.03 per cent. The growth in the 2021-22 financial year was 7.1 per cent, which was 6.94 per cent in the preceding financial year.

The BBS has released quarterly GDP figures as per the conditions the International Monetary Fund (IMF) set for its $4.7 billion loan. Besides, the labour force survey should also be done quarterly. BBS has already started publishing quarterly labour force survey reports.

The BBS, in its quarterly report on GDP, said that it has taken steps to release quarterly gross domestic product (QGDP) estimates in line with the government’s decision taken in November 2020 and the IMF advice afterwards. Like other countries of the world they are estimating QGDP following the production method.

According to BBS data, on a point-to-point basis at constant prices, the growth rate in the agriculture sector in the first quarter of the current fiscal was at 0.84 per cent, which was 2.07 per cent in the same period of the 2022-23 fiscal. The growth in agriculture was 3.37 per cent in the Last financial year.

In the industrial sector, the growth in the first quarter of the current financial year was 9.67 per cent. This was 7.17 per cent in the same period of the previous financial year. The growth in the last quarter of FY2022-23 was 11.41 per cent.

On the other hand, the growth in the service sector was 3.96 per cent, which was 2.87 per cent in the last quarter of FY2022-23. The growth of this sector in the first quarter of the last financial year, however, was 12.87 per cent.

The World Bank has predicted that the growth of Bangladesh would decrease in the current financial year. The global lender estimated that the economic growth of Bangladesh could be 5.6 per cent in FY2023-24.

The government has, however, set a GDP growth target of 7.5 per cent for this financial year, and the figure was the same in the previous fiscal too.