Bangladesh should be careful about falling into the middle-income trap, said Axel van Trotsenburg, the World Bank’s managing director of operations.

The national development discourse in Bangladesh often mistakenly considers graduating from the Least Developed Country (LDC) category and becoming a middle-income country (MIC) as interchangeable. Senior-level policymakers continue to express their aspiration for the country to join the middle-income group by 2021, which marks the 50th anniversary of Bangladesh's independence.