Eid festivals clock up Tk 92,820cr in retail sales
Bangladesh recorded retail sales of $10-12 billion (Tk 77,350-92,820 crore) during the last two Eid festivals, which took place within a span of three months, according to the World Bank.
Consumer confidence was buoyed by a stable political climate, said Zahid Hussain, a lead economist for the WB.
“This will contribute to the GDP,” he said while making a presentation on the country's economy yesterday.
Combined retail sales during the last two religious festivals were equivalent to at least 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product size of $129.9 billion.
This is the first time that the multilateral lender has released such figures on the country's Eid sales.
The WB also referred to the recently published MasterCard Worldwide Index of Consumer Confidence to corroborate the upbeat mood of consumers.
In Bangladesh, consumer confidence jumped a whopping 25.9 points in the first half of 2014 to 66.4 points from the previous six months. Hussain said the study cumulated the retail sales figures obtained from the shoppers' associations for Eid-ul-Fitr and the sales of sacrificial animals ahead of Eid-ul-Azha.
Eid-ul-Fitr is the country's biggest spending season, when most families of the predominantly Muslim nation buy clothes, footwear and other accessories, while Eid-ul-Azha witnesses sacrifices of hundreds of thousands of cows, goats and buffaloes.
Nearly one crore cattle were sacrificed during the Eid-ul-Azha earlier this month, according to Shaheen Ahmed, chairman of the Bangladesh Tanners Association.
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