Nirmal Barman
Published:2018-04-10 16:12:11 BdST
Kamal terms WB's GDP growth projection hypothetical
FT ONLINE
Coming down heavily on the World Bank's latest GDP growth projection of 6.5-6.6 percent for Bangladesh in the current fiscal year (FY18), Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal on Monday said the government does not bother what the World Bank says as it reveals information and data based on hypothesis.
"The World Bank deals with the formal economy, they prepare reports sitting at their office in Dhaka, they don't go outside Dhaka," the minister said in his reaction at his ministry office after the Washington-based lending agency yesterday revealed the Bangladesh Development Update at their Dhaka office.
AHM Mustafa Kamal also claimed that all the figures given by the World Bank are not true, rather the figures generated by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) are proper.
"I'm astonished to hear the World Bank figures today," Kamal said, adding that the World Bank officials working in Dhaka lack sincerity and it varies from person to person.
He also opined that if the World Bank officials working in India would have revealed such GDP figures, it would have crossed 8 percent mark.
The planning minister asked why the World Bank is raising question about the data generated by the BBS as the Washington-based lending agency is implementing a project at the BBS spending crores of Taka.
The World Bank's latest projection of 6.5-6.6 GDP growth for FY18 is significantly lower than the government's recent projection of 7.65 percent growth in the current fiscal year.
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