Bangladesh on course to reach another milestone

It is encouraging to see our economy recovering well from the pandemic, to the point where the government's finance division is projecting that it will become a half-a-trillion-dollar economy next fiscal year. According to the forecast, the size of Bangladesh's economy would be USD 510 billion in the 2022-23 fiscal year after growing at 10.7 percent. A large part of this growth, it has been estimated, is being driven by a successful vaccination campaign and steady growth in agriculture and industry.

The pandemic considerably slowed down the country's economic growth. Hence, it is of no surprise that once its effects start to fade away, our GDP growth will increase quite substantially. As the daily infection rate dropped below five percent from October, we have seen domestic demand rebound, which gave a massive boost to growth. Bangladesh's exports and remittance inflow figures have also been notable of late. Even during most of the pandemic period, our agriculture sector has continued to impress. This is a most remarkable achievement on part of our farmers, whose hard work has been a major driver of our success as a nation.

On the other hand, certain sectors such as the leather industry, textile industry and other non-metallic minerals industry have been performing extremely well. Thus, it is incumbent upon the government to provide them with all the necessary support to help continue their growth.

Having said all that, we agree with the experts that we are not yet completely out of the woods. The Omicron variant of the coronavirus, which has been tearing through certain parts of the world, continues to be a real and present danger to us. It has already caused massive setbacks for some of the developed countries and their economic recoveries, and Bangladesh must take all precautionary measures to ensure that it doesn't suffer a similar fate. Therefore, while the recovery we have seen so far does give us a cause for celebration, we must remain vigilant to ensure that this recovery does not fall by the wayside. Additionally, the increased wealth gap and poverty that the pandemic has caused must be addressed by the government, so that our growth can be truly inclusive and meaningful.