Kamal: Bangladesh GDP reaches $411bn

[N.Siddiqui]

25 billion US dollars in the last half of 2021.

Is the momentum there in first half of fin. year 2022. Or you mean financial year 2021-22(july 2021-june 2022).

 

[Khan_21]

You are aware that GDP per capita PPP cannot be fudged?

Also BD economy exported 25 billion US dollars in the last half of 2021. Again you cannot make that up as it can be crossed checked with the imports of the countries that BD exports to.

Anyway I am hopeful that Pakistan can turn the corner as Imran Khan seems a decent, smart and honest guy.

With him and China, Pakistan can do well but you need to still make major social and economic changes as your population is already 220 million that even massive Chinese investments, trade routes and market by themselves cannot make Pakistani economy boom by itself.

Your own websites say government is fudging data. A month ago per capita is $1900 now its $2400. At this rate you will surpassing 99% of the countries by the end of the day. Do you want to believe figures from a government that won "98%" of the seats in the general election?

If you check most consumption data you will see in most of them bd is half of PK. PK is doing quiet good especially in tech. Our startup scene is booming because of the current government and had more than $400M in VC funding which is more than previous six years combined. IT exports are more than $2.5 billion.

I dont deny that BD is not doing well. But not to the extent that your government is showing the world. Ground realities say otherwise.

 

[UKBengali]

Your own websites say government is fudging data. A month ago per capita is $1900 now its $2400. At this rate you will surpassing 99% of the countries by the end of the day. Do you want to believe figures from a government that won "98%" of the seats in the general election?

If you check most consumption data you will see in most of them bd is half of PK. PK is doing quiet good especially in tech. Our startup scene is booming because of the current government and had more than $400M in VC funding which is more than previous six years combined. IT exports are more than $2.5 billion.

I dont deny that BD is not doing well. But not to the extent that your government is showing the world. Ground realities say otherwise.

No it was 2,100 US dollars but increased by 15% after the base year was changed. This is normal and what has also happened in Pakistan.

2,500 US dollars nominal and 6,400 in terms of PPP gives a multiplier of 2.6 which is a little lower than the 3 average we find in countries with similar levels of economic development. The Taka seems to be a little overvalued due to BD's strong exports and sound fiscal status - external debt to gdp ratio is a little under 20% of GDP and BD has never defaulted on any loan repayments.

Yes the current government is not democratic but at this stage it is better that a single semi-competent party stays in power for at least 15-20 years in order to put the foundations in place for long-term economic development.

 

[Bilal9]

The rate at which BD is going up is very suspicious. Its jumping from $1600 to 2000 and then 2500 in a matter of few months. Every other few months there is a claim by a minister in BD how big the GDP is now. The whole thing is fishy.

A common brand like mcdonalds wouldnt even come to BD. Most brands come to India/PK and completely avoid BD.

Let me say a few things to break up your misconception. You need to visit Dhaka.

"Investments" by companies like McDonalds is dependent on existence of local competition and how long they will be patronized locally. Fast food is really not even an investment as local Bangladeshi companies can and do offer much higher level of Urban Western food products, services and menu/cuisine choices at the same cost McDonalds planned to offer locally (i.e. AppleBee's level of burgers at McDonalds prices). Having said that - for young people there are KFC, Burger King, Herfy and a slew of other fast food outlets (from Asian and Middle Eastern sources - of course all Halal), both in Mall food courts and out of them. Who needs McDonalds??

If you're that much into Burgers - there are a hundred and one other burger places in Dhaka, offering carefully prepared humongous double patty burgers, shakes and fries of much, much higher quality. This costs the same as a McDonald's burger would and the decor is way better than the clinical decor of McDonalds.

FARMHOUSE BURGER, Dhaka City - Menu, Prices & Restaurant Reviews - Tripadvisor

Farmhouse Burger, Dhaka City: See 35 unbiased reviews of Farmhouse Burger, rated 4.5 of 5 on Tripadvisor and ranked #50 of 942 restaurants in Dhaka City.

www.tripadvisor.com

What high technology does one need to flip burgers and make fries? McDonalds cannot be a barometer of any country's economic success.

I head over to Peyala in my neighborhood for an Umami Burger anytime I'm home.

Facebook

www.facebook.com

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=325636736061259

Dhaka eateries range from street food all the way to by-invite-only private seven course catered dinners by Sous Chefs (who went to Le Cordon Bleu and other cooking schools in Paris) costing Tk. 30,000 a sitting (these chefs all work in Asian cities like Bangkok and KL and visit Dhaka occasionally). I know this.

Average dinners by upper middle class families that I have attended and paid for myself costs Tk. 5000 per head. Dhaka takes a back seat to no place in cuisine offerings.

Pakistan is not fudging data. Our PPP is $6500 after rebasing our economy yesterday and that actually shows on the ground.

BD per capita seems to shooting up 100% each month. With the kind of authoratarian government BD has I wont be surprised if there is massive data fudging.

Consumption of cement/oil/cars/electricity is higher in PK and in most cases almost double which leads me to believe the data not being true.

Maybe BBS is fudging data as I've said before. Recent re-basing was one of the reasons that the numbers went up.

But even slum people in Bangladesh can eat three square meals a day, can live a more or less tolerable existence, can educate their kids, get necessary healthcare and are not coming out in the streets and burning tyres (not comparing to other countries). The growth in Bangladesh is more inclusive and equal than most other places (and bottom-up instead of top-down like in India) - even semi-educated women can work and level of literacy is higher than many neighbors (even womens' literacy).

You won't know until and unless you visit.

That is all I care about.

The poster you replied has already been told many times about "accumulated wealth" but just finds it too painful to accept BD has surpassed Pakistan in nominal per capita and has now veen matched it in per capita PPP.

I would leave them be as in 15-20 years down the line even they would be too embarrassed to try to compare the two countries as any equivalence.

While I wish Pakistan well, it needs 10-15 years of sustained social and economic reforms before it gets to the growth stage that BD is at now.

I know things look good in Bangladesh now, but 15-20 years down the line, who knows? Same for Pakistan too. I do hope things look better for both countries.

A country's fortune (Allah's Niamat) can change in a few year's time.

For now - we need to continue on the path of good governance and continue social and economic reforms that we had started earlier. Keep our collective heads down and show work instead of talk.

 

[Azog]

Well done Bangladesh.

it really helps when you don’t have to face multiple security risks like Pakistan do.

 

[PoondolotoPandalum]

If you're going to critique something, make sure you have the right figures. This is why topics like this keep going round and round because people simply don't properly check the facts they base their arguments on, or listen to what anyone else has to say.

$1900 per capita figure was for the 2019-2020 Financial year. It doesn't go from $1900 to $2557 like you're implying. For late 2021, BBS calculated a per capita income of $2227. IMF estimates from their April 2021 outlook was $2140. But bear in mind BBS figures is a whole Financial Year ahead of IMF estimates, as our financial year works differently. So BBS's estimates are about a year ahead of IMF estimates. That's how it always was. I think Pakistan also has a similar fiscal year.

And then re-basing happened, which puts our GDP to $411 billion, and per capita rose to $2557. And then your own country did the same and now it's 100% Halal. The rate of GDP growth after rebasing was almost identical between both BD and Pak. But our per capita grew a lot higher because our population growth rate is HALF yours. 4.4 million (2% change) people were born in Pakistan in 2020 compared to 1.64 million in Bangladesh (1%). So naturally, GDP per head is a lot higher. Even if our GDP grew at the same rate (which they're not), our per capita increase will be higher simply because of population.

I really don't wanna go down the topic of whose more/less credible, your PBS or our BBS, let's assume both are more or less around the ballpark. They're vastly more qualified than any of us here, whose understanding is of a pure surface level. GDP calculations are estimates. Organizations like BBS and PBS will always pick the upper range of estimates.

"Your own websites say the government is fudging data"

GDP estimates are disputed in virtually every country, including yours. One only has to casually scroll through the opposition media of your country to see just how much your economic figures are disputed by your opposition. And then outsiders like me cherry-pick those disputes as some kinda proof that your economy is underperforming. No one's got time for data. Just stick to official figures and credible international organizations (like the ones you borrow from).

As far as consumption figures go, this has been tackled by others in detail before. A lot of the data people cite are outdated. But regardless, Bangladesh and Pakistan have very different economic structures. Pakistan's economy for a long time was consumption and import-led. Your consumption figures on some items are higher than quite a few countries ahead of you economically (like Vietnam), not just Bangladesh. It's a really superficial shallow metric for development. I can flip it and ask why are your social indicators so low? Your hunger index, something folks here use as the number 1 reason why Pak's economy is better than India's, turns out to be quite a bit behind Bangladesh, along with most other social indicators. Do they eat cars or something? No one from the subcontinent should chest beat about these metrics. But please, get the basics sorted before bragging about consumption.

Our country's economies are fundamentally different in structure. Pakistan for a long time has been an import-based consumption-based economy. That bubble burst in 2017, and now you're forced to focus on manufacturing and exports instead, just like Bangladesh did for the last 2 decades. Your economy is fundamentally a top-down one (much like India tbh), and Bangladesh's is bottom-up. What do you think generates more GDP in a developing country? 100 high-paid IT jobs or 10,000 low (admittedly exploitatively low) paid factory jobs? The low-paying workers will spend on essentials which will drive up the local economy (which BD has a lot of btw, we're less reliant on imports for our consumer goods than Pakistan). And we also have that microfinancing thing going, enabling more people to spend on basics, further driving up economic activities.

Developing countries should really focus on basics and ask which is the fastest way to alleviate poverty rather than grandstanding. The no1 thing that Bangladesh got right was to focus on basics and put human development at the center point. Every successive government had this policy. Economic development was a byproduct. But you can't get sustained economic growth without addressing the basics

 

[PoondolotoPandalum]

I hope what you have written is true...

excerpt:
two million young jobseekers entering the labor market each year for the next decade, and climate change posing formidable risks (it is ranked as the 7th most vulnerable country), Bangladesh faces severe challenges. It enjoys growth momentum, but its fortunes are much too closely tied to a single, low-tech industry and to overseas remittances. The failure to use garments as a springboard to diversify into more complex products, as Korea did; to nurture world class firms with brand recognition, as several East Asian economies have done; to improve the business environment and governance; and to raise factor productivity, which determines whether a country moves steadily up the income ladder, warn of troubles ahead.

Second, the experience of Korea and other East Asian economies demonstrated the need for early diversification into higher-value manufacturers. All these countries began their ascent up the income ladder by producing light manufactures but then quickly branched out into complex products. In the Hausman-Hidalgo-Klinger terminology, these “monkeys” moved from one end of the forest to the other in one big leap. That sort of structural transformation now looks forbiddingly difficult for an LDC, even Bangladesh. There are technological barriers to entry, high-value GVCs are harder to integrate with for newcomers, manufacturing is automating and becoming servitized, and the share of manufacturing in GDP and its contribution to growth is diminishing. As we can see from the Bangladeshi case, the Korea/Taiwan-type manufacturing and export-led growth stories are not being replicated—not by Bangladesh, or emerging markets such as India, Brazil, and Mexico.

Third, Vietnam, the only country that appears to be following the East Asian playbook, highlights the importance of foreign direct investment (FDI) in firmly placing a country on the path to rapid and sustainable growth. It would seem highly desirable for countries that are ambitious and entrepreneurial to pull out the stops—fiscal and otherwise—to attract FDI that could accelerate the process of diversification. The Singapores and Irelands of the world would never have made it without a high volume of FDI.

This is a 100% valid criticism. Bangladesh is not an Asian Tiger economy yet, not even close. We do not have the foundations to be one. I would say we've just started building the foundation works on some areas, but on others not so much. Particularly on education. Our NGOs did an amazing job increasing our schooling rate, particularly of girls. But tertiary-level education is lacking, and that needs state-level investments and focus. No such thing as decent vocational education either, something badly needed in a country that aspires to be a "manufacturing export powerhouse". We don't have the skillset available to go up the value chain.

What we've achieved so far has perhaps been one of the most successful grassroots-led development stories, enough to get us out as an LDC and into a lower middle-income economy. But that's as far as it'll get you. Anything further needs a fundamental change of our political, civil service, and institutional systems, and I don't see that happening anytime soon sadly.

 

[UKBengali]

Unfortunately this whole BD produces fake GDP statistics has been encouraged by a couple of BD posters and one or two others have also somewhat joined in the narrative to some extent.

BD's data is just as reliable as any other country at a similar level of economic development.

Just by looking at BD's export performance and increase in domestic consumer market since BAL came into power should shut up this allegation but some are far too narrow-minded to open their minds to what has been happening in BD for some time now.

 

[bluesky]

Unfortunately this whole BD produces fake GDP statistics has been encouraged by a couple of BD posters and one or two others have also somewhat joined in the narrative to some extent.

BD's data is just as reliable as any other country at a similar level of economic development.

Just by looking at BD's export performance and increase in domestic consumer market since BAL came into power should shut up this allegation but some are far too narrow-minded to open their minds to what has been happening in BD for some time now.

No doubt, the GDP figures are fully faked with two times the real figures. Read the news below about the Govt. Primary schools in Dhaka. These have no money to develop even the school grounds or the buildings or classrooms. All are an unclean mess.

Teachers’ children study at other institutions

According to the Dhaka district’s primary education office, there are 342 primary schools in Dhaka city.

en.prothomalo.com

So, where is your GDP money? If the GDP is that high why the tax money from there is not collected and used to develop the schools? A road here and there with Chinese money is no recipe for GDP figures or national development.

Less than 8% tax vs GDP is a world record. It shows the GDP is shown double. Only Chinese money is keeping BD floating that will dry out in a few years at maturity.

People do not see any such development on the ground but find them in the newspaper columns and from the mouths of die-hard BAL cronies like you. Big talking only.

 

[N.Siddiqui]

Less than 8% tax vs GDP is a world record. It shows the GDP is shown double. Only Chinese money is keeping BD floating that will dry out in a few years at maturity.

Bangladesh tax collection, all revenue is about 2.4 billion USD per month in 2021-22, and that makes it about 28.8 billion USD per year. This makes it about 5,040 billion PKR, more than 1000 billion PKR less than Pakistan tax collection of 2020. The curious case of lower tax collection and higher GDP nominal.

Bangladesh Tax Revenue, 1990 – 2024 | CEIC Data

Bangladesh Tax Revenue was reported at 1.786 USD bn in Jul 2024. This records a decrease from the previous number of 4.911 USD bn for Jun 2024.

www.ceicdata.com

Government Revenues in Pakistan increased to 6272.20 PKR Billion in 2020 from 4900.70 PKR Billion in 2019. Government Revenues in Pakistan averaged 4322.42 ...

Pakistan Government Revenues

Government Revenues in Pakistan increased to 9633.50 PKR Billion in 2023 from 8035.40 PKR Billion in 2022. This page provides - Pakistan Government Revenues- actual values, historical data, forecast, chart, statistics, economic calendar and news.

tradingeconomics.com

 

[bluesky]

Bangladesh tax collection, all revenue is about 2.4 billion USD per month in 2021-22, and that makes it about 28.8 billion USD per year.

So, the tax collection is only 7% of the GDP. So, the GDP figure of BD is virtually fake. Even Nepal collects about 30% tax compared to the GDP figures.

 

[N.Siddiqui]

So, the tax collection is only 7% of the GDP. So, the GDP figure of BD is virtually fake. Even Nepal collects about 30% tax compared to the GDP figures.

A higher GDP nominal not commensurate with the tax collection, and the visible prosperity, the higher BPL figures cited by UN others will make it look suspicious.

 

[UKBengali]

Bangladesh tax collection, all revenue is about 2.4 billion USD per month in 2021-22, and that makes it about 28.8 billion USD per year. This makes it about 5,040 billion PKR, more than 1000 billion PKR less than Pakistan tax collection of 2020. The curious case of lower tax collection and higher GDP nominal.

Bangladesh Tax Revenue, 1990 – 2024 | CEIC Data

Bangladesh Tax Revenue was reported at 1.786 USD bn in Jul 2024. This records a decrease from the previous number of 4.911 USD bn for Jun 2024.

www.ceicdata.com

Government Revenues in Pakistan increased to 6272.20 PKR Billion in 2020 from 4900.70 PKR Billion in 2019. Government Revenues in Pakistan averaged 4322.42 ...

Pakistan Government Revenues

Government Revenues in Pakistan increased to 9633.50 PKR Billion in 2023 from 8035.40 PKR Billion in 2022. This page provides - Pakistan Government Revenues- actual values, historical data, forecast, chart, statistics, economic calendar and news.

tradingeconomics.com

Dude....

This happens in much richer countries like Indonesia for example.

In 2019, Indonesia was at only 12% of GDP and they have nominal GDP per capita of over 4,000 US dollars. India with a GDP per capita of half this number has tax collection that is 18% of GDP.

I would give up this clutching at straws and rather than worry about BD, see how you can personally improve Pakistan's poor economic performance to date.

 

[RangeMaster]

Tax collection Of Bangladesh for the month of December 2021 was $2.7 billion. While Pakistani authorities collected $3.4 billion during the same period.
Bangladesh collected $12.80 billion during July-December FY21.
Pakistan collected $16.52 billion during July-December FY21.

FBR exceeds first half tax collection target | The Express Tribune

Revenue authority misses monthly target

tribune.com.pk

Bangladesh govt's tax collection rises 14.22pc in July-Dec period

Tax-revenue collection grew 14.22 per cent, year on year, in the first six months of the current fiscal year but the amount stood Tk 170.81 billion short of the half-yearly target. The National Board of Revenue (NBR) achieved 88.08 per cent of its target or Tk 1.26 trillion in the July-December pe

thefinancialexpress.com.bd

 

[N.Siddiqui]

Dude....

This happens in much richer countries like Indonesia for example.

In 2019, Indonesia was at only 12% of GDP and they have nominal GDP per capita of over 4,000 US dollars. India with a GDP per capita of half this number has tax collection that is 18% of GDP.

I would give up this clutching at straws and rather than worry about BD, see how you can personally improve Pakistan's poor economic performance to date.

This wasn't for you, the risposte, you can live in the delusions of grandeur.