Bangladesh loses $1.4b due to political unrest: WB

The World Bank estimated that Bangladesh incurred a $1.4 billion loss in the current fiscal year due to political unrest in the country.

Of the overall loss can be translated to a total of 86 percent in services, 11 percent in industry and the remaining three percent was in agriculture sector, a WB report released this morning reveals.

The projection came in the multilateral lender's latest edition of 'Bangladesh Economic Update', a survey on the effect of political instability on GDP.

"This loss reduces the growth rate from the 6.2 percent benchmark to 5.4 percent," the WB report says taking into account the impact of political turmoil -- in November and December last year -- and then deflated the result to get the projected real GDP of FY14.

“The projected growth [of 5.4 percent] is not bad,” said Zahid Hussain, lead economist of WB’s Dhaka office, while releasing the report at his office in the capital.

Hussain, however, said that the most affected area is services while the less affected sector is agriculture.