Economy improving, say two ministers
While Bangladesh Bank was seeing various challenges looming over the country's economy, two ministers yesterday said the condition of the economy was improving.
"Due to the ongoing global crisis, the foreign exchange reserves are under pressure for legitimate reasons but we have gradually managed to deal with it," Planning Minister MA Mannan said.
"The country seems to have handled the fluctuations of inflation well," he said while delivering a speech at a meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec).
In its latest policy statement, Bangladesh Bank said the near-term economic outlook seemed to be quite stable but was critically dependent on three external issues.
Those were the length and intensity of the Russia-Ukraine war, interest rate hike spree by the Federal Reserve and the re-emergence of Covid-19 in China, it said.
The war created instability in the world market, which accelerated global inflation as well as that in Bangladesh, among other things, said Mannan.
He went on to say that inflation being on a downward trend for four consecutive months since August last year was particularly noticeable.
A bumper yield of the current Aman season paddy and the abundance of winter vegetables in the market have played a major role in controlling inflation, according to Mannan.
"We hope that the level of inflation will come down further in the near future," said the minister.
In a briefing after the meeting, journalists asked how the minister was finding the state of the economy, amidst the price hikes of utilities and depletion of foreign currency reserves, to be "rosy".
Maybe it is not appropriate to use "rosy" but nothing the minister stated was exaggerated, responded State Minister for Planning Shamsul Alam.
The condition of the economy should not be judged based on solely the foreign exchange reserve. Imports, exports, remittances and government loans also need to be taken into account, he said.
"We are not making up anything without any proper information. We do state what the facts really are and what the data says," he said.
"Everything is open and the data is publicly available. Our foreign direct investment has increased. Remittance and export have also increased. Why do we say that our economy is not in a good condition?" he asked.
"I did not see anything to be hopeless about or be disappointed," added Alam.
About the price hikes of utilities, he said it was a global problem and the hike has been made locally at a tolerable level and was not by the extent taking place globally.
"The government was providing around 6 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) as subsidies," he said, adding that no agricultural subsidy has been decreased.
The country's economic scenario will turn for the better gradually once the global scenario changes, he said.
In the first six month of this fiscal year, Bangladesh availed around $1.36 billion in loans, said Satyajit Karmaker, secretary to the planning commission.
"We definitely can use the foreign money in the next 3-4 years," he said.