Staff Reporter :
Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal on Thursday said food production experienced a 9.43 lakh mts of shortfall in 2016-17 fiscal year due to the early flash flood in the haor areas and countrywide flood caused by heavy rains.
“Recent flood and countrywide heavy rainfall have disrupted production and supply chain that affected the inflation, but it would come down soon,” said the Minister while releasing the monthly consumer price index (CPI) at ‘Meet the Press’ at the NEC conference room in the city’s Sher-e-Bangla Nagar area .
Citing the latest data of Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) he said the rate of inflation in the country in October this year slightly declined to 6.04 percentage point down from 6.12 percentage point in September.
“The general point to point inflation rate was 6.04 percentage point in October. The
The inflation rate in August this year was 5.89 percentage point while it was 5.57 percentage point in July,” he said.
He also hoped that the inflation would be within the target set in the fiscal policy.
The BBS data also showed that the food inflation declined slightly to 7.62 percent in October down from 7.87 percent in September.
On the other hand, the non-food inflation rate, however witnessed an uptrend in October with 3.61 percent up from 3.44 percent in September.
At the rural level, the inflation in October recorded 6.14 percent which was 6.21 percent in the previous month of September.
However, the urban level inflation in October registered 5.86 percent down from 5.95 percent in September.
Talking about the macroeconomic situation, the Planning Minister said that the investment ratio to GDP has increased to 30.5 percent in the last fiscal year saying, “We hope this ratio would reach 31 percent at the end of this fiscal year,”
He said that the public investment ratio to GDP has also crossed over 7 percent with the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) witnessing an uptrend.
The Planning Minister said that the government is going well with the implementation of the Annul Development Programme (ADP) as some 1,400 development projects are now under implementation.
Kamal said that there is now no need to throng the cities and towns as employment opportunities are now being created in the rural areas. “We’ve undertaken plan to build our villages in that way and once the ongoing development projects are
implemented, then our villages would no longer remain as villages. Besides, 100 economic zones are being set up in villages across the country. Once these are set up, then employments would be created for thousands of unemployed.”
Noting that there are some 30 million middle-Income families in the country which is also increasing rapidly in China and India. “But, such middle Income group class in not increasing in our country in such pace and our government is working to enhance that group. Bangladesh is now an Asian Tiger,”
About the growth prospect, AHM Mustafa Kamal, commonly known as Lotus Kamal, said that the country attained 7.28 percent growth in the last fiscal year since there has been political stability in the country.
The Planning Minister also expressed his high hope that Bangladesh would achieve 8 percent growth by 2019 while 9 percent growth by 2020 and thus would be able to maintain 10 percent growth by 2030.
Answering to another question, he said that there was no engineering in the calculation and estimation of data by the BBS saying that transparency was maintained throughout the process while there was no change in the methodology.
Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal on Thursday said food production experienced a 9.43 lakh mts of shortfall in 2016-17 fiscal year due to the early flash flood in the haor areas and countrywide flood caused by heavy rains.
“Recent flood and countrywide heavy rainfall have disrupted production and supply chain that affected the inflation, but it would come down soon,” said the Minister while releasing the monthly consumer price index (CPI) at ‘Meet the Press’ at the NEC conference room in the city’s Sher-e-Bangla Nagar area .
Citing the latest data of Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) he said the rate of inflation in the country in October this year slightly declined to 6.04 percentage point down from 6.12 percentage point in September.
“The general point to point inflation rate was 6.04 percentage point in October. The
The inflation rate in August this year was 5.89 percentage point while it was 5.57 percentage point in July,” he said.
He also hoped that the inflation would be within the target set in the fiscal policy.
The BBS data also showed that the food inflation declined slightly to 7.62 percent in October down from 7.87 percent in September.
On the other hand, the non-food inflation rate, however witnessed an uptrend in October with 3.61 percent up from 3.44 percent in September.
At the rural level, the inflation in October recorded 6.14 percent which was 6.21 percent in the previous month of September.
However, the urban level inflation in October registered 5.86 percent down from 5.95 percent in September.
Talking about the macroeconomic situation, the Planning Minister said that the investment ratio to GDP has increased to 30.5 percent in the last fiscal year saying, “We hope this ratio would reach 31 percent at the end of this fiscal year,”
He said that the public investment ratio to GDP has also crossed over 7 percent with the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) witnessing an uptrend.
The Planning Minister said that the government is going well with the implementation of the Annul Development Programme (ADP) as some 1,400 development projects are now under implementation.
Kamal said that there is now no need to throng the cities and towns as employment opportunities are now being created in the rural areas. “We’ve undertaken plan to build our villages in that way and once the ongoing development projects are
implemented, then our villages would no longer remain as villages. Besides, 100 economic zones are being set up in villages across the country. Once these are set up, then employments would be created for thousands of unemployed.”
Noting that there are some 30 million middle-Income families in the country which is also increasing rapidly in China and India. “But, such middle Income group class in not increasing in our country in such pace and our government is working to enhance that group. Bangladesh is now an Asian Tiger,”
About the growth prospect, AHM Mustafa Kamal, commonly known as Lotus Kamal, said that the country attained 7.28 percent growth in the last fiscal year since there has been political stability in the country.
The Planning Minister also expressed his high hope that Bangladesh would achieve 8 percent growth by 2019 while 9 percent growth by 2020 and thus would be able to maintain 10 percent growth by 2030.
Answering to another question, he said that there was no engineering in the calculation and estimation of data by the BBS saying that transparency was maintained throughout the process while there was no change in the methodology.
