Seminar on rebasing of GDP today

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BSS, Dhaka :
The Planning Division will arrange a seminar on Thursday to highlight and discuss the necessity of rebasing of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The Seminar titled, ‘Rebasing and Revision of GDP: Bangladesh Perspective’ will be held at the NEC Conference Room in the city’s Sher-e-Bangla Nagar area beginning from 10:00 am.
Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal will grace the seminar as the chief guest while PM’s Economic Affairs Adviser Dr Moshiur Rahman, State Minister for Finance and Planning MA Mannan and country’s renowned economist Prof Wahiduddin Mahmud will remain present as special guests.
Chaired by Planning Division Secretary M Ziaul Islam, eminent economist Prof SR Osmani will present the key-note paper at the Seminar.
Economist Prof Wahiduddin Mahmud and General Economics Division (GED) member of the Planning Commission Dr M Shamsul Alam will take part in the main discussion on the key-note presentation.
Planning Division Secretary M Ziaul Islam said the seminar will highlight the necessity of rebasing the GDP after a certain period of time alongside underscoring the need for timely revision of the GDP base year.
According to the officials at the Statistics and Informatics Division, work is undergoing to rebase and revise the GDP base year to 2015-16 from the existing 2005-2006, incorporating many more emerging areas of economic activity into the GDP calculation.
Once measured according to the new base, the country’s GDP size and per capita income will go up.
The changes in size of the real GDP will be mainly due to the inclusion of some new sectors in the calculation and price changes between the two periods. In Bangladesh, the usual practice was to revise GDP base year in every 10 years. In 2013, the base year was changed from 1995-96 to 2005-06.
The BBS, tasked with the job, has already framed and has been implementing a project to rebase the GDP base year titled ‘Modernisation of National Accounts Statistics Project’ with an estimated cost of Tk 11.02 crore.
The BBS had earlier completed the latest rebase with its calculation yardstick just four years back (in 2013) by fixing 2005-06 as new base period to replace 1995-96.
The national statistical organisation, mandated for measuring GDP and other indicators, did its latest in 2013 after 13 years.
Bangladesh’s per-capita income went up in line with the increase in GDP size.

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