The draft of the eighth five-year plan has been finalized focusing on increased GDP growth, investment, savings and revenue collection to ensure sustainable growth amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
The draft plan has been estimated as the long-term target of GDP (gross domestic product).
In 2025, the GDP growth rate in the country will be 8.51 percent, and although it has declined in 2019-20 and 2020-21 due to the Covid-19 situation, the target has been set on the assumption that the economy will turn around again from 2021-22. Dr Shamsul Alam, member (senior secretary), general economics division, Ministry of Planning, said without Corona, GDP growth would have been 8.19 percent in the just-concluded 2019-20 fiscal year.
“According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), it has come to 5.28 percent as a preliminary,” he said, expecting that the effect of corona will be cut from 2021-22 fiscal year. The economy will accelerate. As a result, achieving this goal will not be difficult.”
According to the draft plan, without Corona, the target for GDP growth in the current fiscal year 2020-21 would have been 8.23 percent, but now it has been reduced to 6.50 percent.
However, as the situation is expected to improve in the coming days, the growth target for FY 2021-22 has been set at 8.29 percent.
The target for the fiscal year 2022-23 is 8.32 percent. GDP growth is expected to be 8.37 percent in FY 2023-24 and 8.51 percent in FY 2024-25.
According to the draft, the Corona epidemic has had a huge negative impact on the lives and resources of the people of the country.
In this situation, a plan has been made to restore the confidence of the people by giving utmost importance to the protection of human health.
The Eighth Five-Year Plan calls for increasing allocations to the healthcare sector, strengthening public-private partnerships, ensuring quality and necessary healthcare at the district level, and launching universal health care services.
In addition, with the help of the World Health Organization, vaccines should be collected and made accessible to all.
At the same time, financial incentives need to be given to domestic organizations that are doing research on vaccines.
It has already been asked to expedite the implementation of incentive and assistance packages announced by the government.
Strong implementation of social security programmes and poverty reduction programmes will be added.
It has been said that job creation is one of the challenges.
Eighty-five percent of the country's employment is in the informal sector.
In this case, there will be efforts to gradually increase employment in the institutional sector.
There is a lack of education, training and skilled workers in the institutional sector.
Therefore, the ongoing efforts to meet this deficit through human resource development will be continued.
Dr Zahid Hussain, former lead economist of the World Bank said the government should wait for the long-term plan as the country is still fighting against the pandemic.
“No one can predict amid the virus pandemic,” he said adding that no country can assume what the next two years will look like.