BNP’s blockade enforces Bangladesh Government to cut down targeted growth

Enamul Hafiz Latifee writes,

The Bangladesh government is planning to amend the targeted economic growth for the FY 2014-15 as the highly violent continuous blockades and strikes announced by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its allies are hitting the overall economy very hardly.

Finance Minister AMA Muhith expressed to the media at his secretariat office on 1^st February, “We will have to revise it because of the current situation. The revision exercise has already begun”. However, the government had aimed before to attain 7.3 percent economic growth for the FY 2014-15. But the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) have forecasted that the economy of Bangladesh would expand by 6.2 percent, hence the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has expressed the growth rate can be 6.4. Meanwhile, the at half yearly publication of the central bank, i.e., Bangladesh Bank’s (BB) Monetary Policy Statement (MPS) Jan-Jun 2015, it has been asserted that GDP growth may fall between 6.5-6.8 percent depending on the fluctuation of political situation.

The minister, Muhith has delivered his colleagues in the parliament that how the continuous blockades and life taking strikes that entered its 28^th day is biting developmental efforts thus the budget implementation now.  He has added, “Everything has been affected; people are not being able to run their normal economic activities. How can the economy advance in this situation?”

And these still-going blockades and strikes have caused vandalism on 1084 vehicles, attack on railways for 11 times and killing of 122 people till it’s 39^th day which have led farm incomes to decrease very sharply due to lack of inter-district road and railway transportation, weakened foreign importer’s confidence on the domestic exporters' capability to hand over the ordered items within the given time and diminished the confidence of investors to invest more by taking loans or any other means.

Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DCCI) has already told the media that the country is bearing economic losses worth of BDT (Bangladeshi Taka) 2,277.86 crore per day since 6^th January 2015. And it would amount to BDT 2,500 crore per day if it is computed taking into account the 25 percent loss of the total industrial production.

According to the chief of Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI), Mr. Kazi Akram Uddin Ahmed, “If we want to turn Bangladesh into a middle-income country, all need to avoid confrontation and negative political programs” which is not visible in the country to have any political solution still now and possibly this is the most tragic year for Bangladesh in last two decades after the fall of former President and autocratic leader of the country, Hussain Muhammad Ershad in terms of violence and national economic losses.

Writer: Enamul Hafiz Latifee, Independent Research Scholar, Department of Economics, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Bangladesh.