Hammer-fist
FULL MEMBER
- Joined
- Oct 8, 2012
- Messages
- 1,221
- Reaction score
- 0
The Bengal Tiger is on the move!
Published : Monday, 11 February 2013
Faizel Ismail
Jim O' Neill, the famous Goldman Sachs economist, predicted that Bangladesh will be one of the next eleven emerging countries of the 21st century. In many quarters this statement is acknowledged and endorsed as well. Bangladesh is the only least developed country (LDC) amongst the Neill's group of emerging developing countries; and the scrutiny of Bangladesh's trade and economic performance over six years has provided enough evidences as to how the country is on track to achieve this challenging target.
Macroeconomic and trade policy: According to the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) Secretariat Report, Bangladesh's gross domestic product (GDP) growth over the past six years has averaged over 6.0 per cent. In the same period Bangladesh made significant advances in reducing both rural and urban poverty. According to the World Bank (WB) Bangladesh is now on track to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for infant and child mortality, and gender equality in education, by 2015. Indeed Bangladesh has been growing consistently over the past two decades, resulting in its poverty levels declining from 57 per cent in 1990 to an estimated 31.5 per cent in 2010.
Bangladesh was thus able to both grow at spectacular rates and also make significant progress in addressing the underlying challenges of poverty and development.
Economically, Bangladesh has also undergone a very significant structural transformation. Agriculture constituted over half of GDP at independence in 1971, the manufacturing sector was relatively small constituting just 10 per cent of GDP, and services constituted the rest of the GDP. Whilst the share of agriculture in GDP has fallen to 15 per cent, it still employs over 52 per cent of the population, and remains crucial to the food security concerns of Bangladesh. The strong performance of the readymade garments (RMG) sector was a main driver of growth increasing its share of GDP to over 17 per cent by 2010. During the past decade the services sector also increased its share of GDP to over 50 per cent. Thus Bangladesh has undergone a significant structural transformation over a relatively short historical time span.
In the past six years all three economic sectors, agriculture, industry and services, have exhibited robust growth. In 2011 the WTO Report states that the agriculture sector grew by 5.0 per cent, services grew by 6.6 per cent and industry grew by 8.2 per cent. Bangladesh has also made very commendable reforms on trade policy in this period. The country has been integrating into the world economy with its trade to GDP ratio rising to 55 per cent in 2012.The average applied tariff fell from 15.5 per cent in 2005 to 14.9 per cent in 2011 with most of its tariffs in four bands of 3.0, 5.0, 12 and 25 per cent with zero rates on commodities such as rice, wheat, onions, pulses, edible oils, seeds, fertilisers, medicines and cotton. There has also been significant work done on customs modernisation. According to the WTO Report, the Chittagong Port which handles over 90 per cent of the Bangladesh's trade, has "significantly improved its competitiveness and efficiency relative to other ports in the region in terms of costs, vessel turn-around time and container handling productivity." Bangladesh is also in the process of modernising its Intellectual Property (IP), laws with a new Trade Marks Act passed in 2009, a new Patents Act, and a new Industrial Design Act, in draft stage. Bangladesh made other notable reforms such as the passing of a new Competition Act in 2012.
Development challenges: However, Bangladesh has some very significant development challenges. The World Bank Country Report notes that, "with around 55 million people still living in poverty and two-fifths of children chronically malnourished, development needs remain large and pressing." This is Bangladesh's largest development challenge. Two other exogenous challenges may continue to cast a shadow over its growth prospects: climate change and the unstable global economy.
First, Bangladesh is amongst the most densely populated countries in the world with its geographic position making it most vulnerable to floods, droughts and cyclones. It is estimated that a four degree rise in global temperature would raise the sea level of the Bay of Bengal by 100cm by 2100, inundating 15 per cent of the country's land areas and displacing 20 million people. The negative effects of climate change can wipe out all the gains made by Bangladesh towards achieving the MDGs.
Second, Bangladesh is still dependent on the major developed country markets--the European Union (EU) for over 50 per cent and the US for over 20 per cent of its exports. The current economic downturn in the EU and the fragile US economic recovery make these markets highly unpredictable and unstable. Bangladesh has already suffered a decline in its export growth to the EU market in the past year.
Sectoral policies manufacturing: The manufacturing sector of Bangladesh consists of a relatively modern formal sector with larger firms constituting about 70 per cent of output and an informal sector consisting of many micro-scale unregistered firms. It is driven mainly by the garments, jute yarn and twine, pharmaceuticals, tobacco manufacturing, beverages, cement and ship-building sub-sectors. Interestingly, the production of small ships is a promising area of competitive advantage and built up significant capacity to manufacture pharmaceuticals, exporting USD 27 million of pharmaceuticals in 2010. However, the manufacturing sector is dominated by Ready Made Garments that is made up of woven (shirts, T-shirts and trousers) and knit products (undergarments, socks, stockings and sweaters). In the case of knitwear about 90 per cent of fabrics are produced locally. However, much of the fabric and yarn is imported. One of the main reasons for the competitiveness of the sector is the low wage rates in Bangladesh (around USD 64/month). China's wage rates are more than double of this. Bangladesh has over 5,000 garment factories employing about 3.6 million people, mainly women. The garment sector is expected to remain the largest contributor to growth in output for the foreseeable future, according to the WTO Report.
The government of Bangladesh has set out its vision for the manufacturing sector in its New Industrial Policy 2010. Vision 2021 has set the target of an 8.0 per cent growth rate by 2015 and to increase the share of manufacturing in GDP to 28 per cent from the current 17 per cent. So far manufacturing has been narrowly based with a concentration in a few sectors--textiles, apparel, leather and frozen food and beverages. The Sixth Five Year Plan has identified diversification of products and markets as a key objective and the need to plug into regional supply chains and move up the ladder into intermediate products. To help it diversify its production and export markets, the Ministry of Commerce has created Business Promotion Councils in partnership with the private sector in a number of the above product sectors.
This is both an ambitious and impressive vision and plan of action by the government. Dani Rodrik, a famous economist, has argued that industrial policy is "a process of self-discovery" rather than a process of identifying hard targets for government support. Thus Bangladesh will need to sharpen its focus on a few of the more promising identified product sectors (32 identified).
Agriculture: Although agriculture has fallen in its percentage share of GDP, it remains a major employer and provider of income and food security. It also provides strong support to the manufacturing and services sectors. Crops, such as rice and wheat, constitute the largest sub-sector. Rice constitutes about 90 per cent of food-grain produced. Bangladesh is the fourth largest producer of rice in the world. Food security is the main objective of government--ensuring an adequate and stable supply of nutritious food, including through its own food-related social safety net programmes. To this end, the government has continued to subsidise fertiliser and diesel. These programmes appear to be within Bangladesh's WTO commitments. Food imports constitute about 13 per cent of total imports making Bangladesh a net food-importing country. Bangladesh produces enough food to feed its people although imports are needed to cope with natural calamities such as droughts and floods. Production of rice has increased from 6.0 million tonnes in 1971 to 33 million tonnes in 2010.
Services: Services has been the fastest growing sector of the economy, growing at an average of 6.0-7.0 per cent. The leading sub-sectors are wholesale and retail, transport storage and communications. The government has focused on developing the services sector particularly in the countries outsourcing capabilities, including call centres. There has been significant liberalisation in financial services, telecommunication and transport services during the past six years. However, the services sectors are all at an early stage of development with significant scope for further growth. Some of these opportunities and innovative steps that are being taken already are highlighted below.
In banking, the private commercial banks including foreign banks have increased their participation in the economy. A very small percentage of the population participates in the formal banking system (just over 13 per cent). Thus Bangladesh has over 610 licensed micro-credit organisations. The government has created a Microcredit Regulatory Authority to supervise the non-government microfinance institutions (MFIs). These MFIs are prominent in Bangladesh with the total loans provided corresponding to 3.0 per cent of GDP, according to the WTO Report. Of course the most celebrated and well known of these MFIs is the Grameen Bank, which has over 8.0 million borrowers. The Grameen Bank works in over 81,000 villages and is owned by the poor borrowers of the bank, who are mostly women.
In telecommunications, the effect of participation of both domestic and foreign capital has led to mobile phone subscriptions increasing from a negligible number to 90 million by early 2012. Mobile phones create new opportunities for banking, trade, tele-medicine and distance education.
Another interesting emerging sector in Bangladesh is the information technology (IT) sector. The IT and IT-enabled services sector, according to the WTO Report, employs 20,000 workers at present and is valued at USD 250 million. Wage levels in the sector are substantially lower than other established outsourcing centres such as India and the Philippines.
The Secretariat Report also states that Bangladesh has an extensive and diversified system of roads, railways, inland waterways, two seaports for maritime shipping and civil aviation facilities. Roads currently carry over 80 per cent of passenger and freight traffic. Railways cover only 7.0 per cent and are underutilised. In addition, Bangladesh has some 700 rivers and tributaries creating one of the largest inland waterway networks in the world which is underused for domestic transport.
Bangladesh's biggest resource is its people. The biggest story in services is the impact of remittances. Remittances more than doubled to about USD 12.8 billion in 2012, making up over 10 per cent of GDP. Remittances are much larger than both aid flows and FDI. Bangladesh ranks seventh in the world behind India, China and the Philippines as a recipient of remittances. Most Bangladeshi workers go to the Gulf countries and are mainly recruited to fill low-skilled jobs. As a result, Bangladeshi workers remitted only USD 2,000 on a per capita basis, far lower than other Asian countries.
The role of the international community: Bangladesh has a large set of development challenges. The international community has a major role to play to facilitate Bangladesh's effort to mitigate these challenges.
The World Bank is the largest donor in the country including on Aid for Trade. Its most recent Country Report has indicated International Development Association (IDA) commitment of over USD 2.0 billion which includes USD 1.2 billion for the Padma Bridge [Padma Bridge financing was recently cancelled], financing for an additional 750 MW of power generation and support for Economic Zone Development and Public-Private Partnerships.
The EU has been providing support to Bangladesh to build its trade capacity. The work of the EU in supporting the building of standards, in the case of Bangladesh's shrimp exports, through the Bangladesh Quality Support Programme, is an excellent example of how Aid for Trade can support export development. Bangladesh has been proactive and also provided the TRIPS Council with a detailed Aid for Trade proposal for a budget of USD 71 million to effectively implement the TRIPS Agreement.
Of course Aid for Trade is no substitute for market access. The impact of the EU duty-free quota-free provisions under its Everything But Arms (EBA) scheme and the simplification of its rules of origin has had a very significant impact on Bangladesh. In contrast, the US GSP (Generalised System of Preferences) scheme (2009), according to the WTO Secretariat Report, still does not include products of export interest to Bangladesh such as apparel and clothing, footwear and leather products. As a consequence, 99.6 per cent of Bangladesh's exports to the US in 2009 entered with Most Favoured Nation (MFN) duties. In the case of Japan 98 per cent of Bangladesh's exports in 2010 were eligible for duty-free treatment. In the case of China 92 per cent of all Bangladesh's exports to China entered through the duty-free quota-free programme for the LDCs in 2010. India's duty-free quota-free programme for the LDCs will cover 85 per cent of its tariff lines by 2012 according to the WTO Secretariat.
Regional integration: Vision 2021 states that Bangladesh is strategically positioned to become a regional economic and commercial hub. Perhaps here is the greatest potential for the rapid and sustainable development of Bangladesh. With India in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and China in the Asia-Pacific Trade Agreement (APTA), Bangladesh has access to two of the world's largest and most dynamic emerging economies within its region. India and China have already provided concessional lines of credit for regional projects, according to the WTO Report. A development integration approach that combines market integration with cooperation in infrastructure development and industrial capacity cooperation through regional value chains, such as is being developed in the Mekong Delta Region and Southern and Eastern Africa, will arguably yield the greatest benefits for Bangladesh.
Conclusion: Bangladesh clearly has Vision and it has a Plan. The Perspective Plan of Bangladesh 2010-21: Making Vision a Reality spells this out clearly. In both the Perspective Plan and the Sixth Five Year Plan, Bangladesh has identified a number of development targets, including on product and trade diversification, infrastructure development and regional economic development. There is no shortage of creativity and innovation in Bangladesh. Bangladesh is well known for its creativity in contemporary literature, music and art. Professor Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize winning philosopher and economist, has his heritage in Bangladesh. It is also the home of the celebrated founder of the Grameen Bank, Professor Muhammad Yunus, another Nobel Prize winner.
Today it might not be an overstatement to announce that Bangladesh is an Asian Tiger; and this Bengal Tiger is on the move! It will build its own development path by a process of 'self-discovery'. It will meet its target to become a middle income country by 2021. It will become an emerging economy of the 21st Century.
The writer is Ambassador and Permanent Representative of South Africa to the WTO during the recently held Trade Policy Review of Bangladesh in the WTO
Financial Express :: Financial Newspaper of Bangladesh
@UKBengali
@eastwatch
@iajdani
@animelive
@CaPtAiN_pLaNeT
@Moander
@Madx
@ShadowFaux
@DURJOY
@RiasatKhan
@sepoi
@PlanetSoldier
@saleen_s7
@Skallagrim
and also @LaBong (due to the Amartya Sen reference)
Published : Monday, 11 February 2013
Faizel Ismail
Jim O' Neill, the famous Goldman Sachs economist, predicted that Bangladesh will be one of the next eleven emerging countries of the 21st century. In many quarters this statement is acknowledged and endorsed as well. Bangladesh is the only least developed country (LDC) amongst the Neill's group of emerging developing countries; and the scrutiny of Bangladesh's trade and economic performance over six years has provided enough evidences as to how the country is on track to achieve this challenging target.
Macroeconomic and trade policy: According to the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) Secretariat Report, Bangladesh's gross domestic product (GDP) growth over the past six years has averaged over 6.0 per cent. In the same period Bangladesh made significant advances in reducing both rural and urban poverty. According to the World Bank (WB) Bangladesh is now on track to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for infant and child mortality, and gender equality in education, by 2015. Indeed Bangladesh has been growing consistently over the past two decades, resulting in its poverty levels declining from 57 per cent in 1990 to an estimated 31.5 per cent in 2010.
Bangladesh was thus able to both grow at spectacular rates and also make significant progress in addressing the underlying challenges of poverty and development.
Economically, Bangladesh has also undergone a very significant structural transformation. Agriculture constituted over half of GDP at independence in 1971, the manufacturing sector was relatively small constituting just 10 per cent of GDP, and services constituted the rest of the GDP. Whilst the share of agriculture in GDP has fallen to 15 per cent, it still employs over 52 per cent of the population, and remains crucial to the food security concerns of Bangladesh. The strong performance of the readymade garments (RMG) sector was a main driver of growth increasing its share of GDP to over 17 per cent by 2010. During the past decade the services sector also increased its share of GDP to over 50 per cent. Thus Bangladesh has undergone a significant structural transformation over a relatively short historical time span.
In the past six years all three economic sectors, agriculture, industry and services, have exhibited robust growth. In 2011 the WTO Report states that the agriculture sector grew by 5.0 per cent, services grew by 6.6 per cent and industry grew by 8.2 per cent. Bangladesh has also made very commendable reforms on trade policy in this period. The country has been integrating into the world economy with its trade to GDP ratio rising to 55 per cent in 2012.The average applied tariff fell from 15.5 per cent in 2005 to 14.9 per cent in 2011 with most of its tariffs in four bands of 3.0, 5.0, 12 and 25 per cent with zero rates on commodities such as rice, wheat, onions, pulses, edible oils, seeds, fertilisers, medicines and cotton. There has also been significant work done on customs modernisation. According to the WTO Report, the Chittagong Port which handles over 90 per cent of the Bangladesh's trade, has "significantly improved its competitiveness and efficiency relative to other ports in the region in terms of costs, vessel turn-around time and container handling productivity." Bangladesh is also in the process of modernising its Intellectual Property (IP), laws with a new Trade Marks Act passed in 2009, a new Patents Act, and a new Industrial Design Act, in draft stage. Bangladesh made other notable reforms such as the passing of a new Competition Act in 2012.
Development challenges: However, Bangladesh has some very significant development challenges. The World Bank Country Report notes that, "with around 55 million people still living in poverty and two-fifths of children chronically malnourished, development needs remain large and pressing." This is Bangladesh's largest development challenge. Two other exogenous challenges may continue to cast a shadow over its growth prospects: climate change and the unstable global economy.
First, Bangladesh is amongst the most densely populated countries in the world with its geographic position making it most vulnerable to floods, droughts and cyclones. It is estimated that a four degree rise in global temperature would raise the sea level of the Bay of Bengal by 100cm by 2100, inundating 15 per cent of the country's land areas and displacing 20 million people. The negative effects of climate change can wipe out all the gains made by Bangladesh towards achieving the MDGs.
Second, Bangladesh is still dependent on the major developed country markets--the European Union (EU) for over 50 per cent and the US for over 20 per cent of its exports. The current economic downturn in the EU and the fragile US economic recovery make these markets highly unpredictable and unstable. Bangladesh has already suffered a decline in its export growth to the EU market in the past year.
Sectoral policies manufacturing: The manufacturing sector of Bangladesh consists of a relatively modern formal sector with larger firms constituting about 70 per cent of output and an informal sector consisting of many micro-scale unregistered firms. It is driven mainly by the garments, jute yarn and twine, pharmaceuticals, tobacco manufacturing, beverages, cement and ship-building sub-sectors. Interestingly, the production of small ships is a promising area of competitive advantage and built up significant capacity to manufacture pharmaceuticals, exporting USD 27 million of pharmaceuticals in 2010. However, the manufacturing sector is dominated by Ready Made Garments that is made up of woven (shirts, T-shirts and trousers) and knit products (undergarments, socks, stockings and sweaters). In the case of knitwear about 90 per cent of fabrics are produced locally. However, much of the fabric and yarn is imported. One of the main reasons for the competitiveness of the sector is the low wage rates in Bangladesh (around USD 64/month). China's wage rates are more than double of this. Bangladesh has over 5,000 garment factories employing about 3.6 million people, mainly women. The garment sector is expected to remain the largest contributor to growth in output for the foreseeable future, according to the WTO Report.
The government of Bangladesh has set out its vision for the manufacturing sector in its New Industrial Policy 2010. Vision 2021 has set the target of an 8.0 per cent growth rate by 2015 and to increase the share of manufacturing in GDP to 28 per cent from the current 17 per cent. So far manufacturing has been narrowly based with a concentration in a few sectors--textiles, apparel, leather and frozen food and beverages. The Sixth Five Year Plan has identified diversification of products and markets as a key objective and the need to plug into regional supply chains and move up the ladder into intermediate products. To help it diversify its production and export markets, the Ministry of Commerce has created Business Promotion Councils in partnership with the private sector in a number of the above product sectors.
This is both an ambitious and impressive vision and plan of action by the government. Dani Rodrik, a famous economist, has argued that industrial policy is "a process of self-discovery" rather than a process of identifying hard targets for government support. Thus Bangladesh will need to sharpen its focus on a few of the more promising identified product sectors (32 identified).
Agriculture: Although agriculture has fallen in its percentage share of GDP, it remains a major employer and provider of income and food security. It also provides strong support to the manufacturing and services sectors. Crops, such as rice and wheat, constitute the largest sub-sector. Rice constitutes about 90 per cent of food-grain produced. Bangladesh is the fourth largest producer of rice in the world. Food security is the main objective of government--ensuring an adequate and stable supply of nutritious food, including through its own food-related social safety net programmes. To this end, the government has continued to subsidise fertiliser and diesel. These programmes appear to be within Bangladesh's WTO commitments. Food imports constitute about 13 per cent of total imports making Bangladesh a net food-importing country. Bangladesh produces enough food to feed its people although imports are needed to cope with natural calamities such as droughts and floods. Production of rice has increased from 6.0 million tonnes in 1971 to 33 million tonnes in 2010.
Services: Services has been the fastest growing sector of the economy, growing at an average of 6.0-7.0 per cent. The leading sub-sectors are wholesale and retail, transport storage and communications. The government has focused on developing the services sector particularly in the countries outsourcing capabilities, including call centres. There has been significant liberalisation in financial services, telecommunication and transport services during the past six years. However, the services sectors are all at an early stage of development with significant scope for further growth. Some of these opportunities and innovative steps that are being taken already are highlighted below.
In banking, the private commercial banks including foreign banks have increased their participation in the economy. A very small percentage of the population participates in the formal banking system (just over 13 per cent). Thus Bangladesh has over 610 licensed micro-credit organisations. The government has created a Microcredit Regulatory Authority to supervise the non-government microfinance institutions (MFIs). These MFIs are prominent in Bangladesh with the total loans provided corresponding to 3.0 per cent of GDP, according to the WTO Report. Of course the most celebrated and well known of these MFIs is the Grameen Bank, which has over 8.0 million borrowers. The Grameen Bank works in over 81,000 villages and is owned by the poor borrowers of the bank, who are mostly women.
In telecommunications, the effect of participation of both domestic and foreign capital has led to mobile phone subscriptions increasing from a negligible number to 90 million by early 2012. Mobile phones create new opportunities for banking, trade, tele-medicine and distance education.
Another interesting emerging sector in Bangladesh is the information technology (IT) sector. The IT and IT-enabled services sector, according to the WTO Report, employs 20,000 workers at present and is valued at USD 250 million. Wage levels in the sector are substantially lower than other established outsourcing centres such as India and the Philippines.
The Secretariat Report also states that Bangladesh has an extensive and diversified system of roads, railways, inland waterways, two seaports for maritime shipping and civil aviation facilities. Roads currently carry over 80 per cent of passenger and freight traffic. Railways cover only 7.0 per cent and are underutilised. In addition, Bangladesh has some 700 rivers and tributaries creating one of the largest inland waterway networks in the world which is underused for domestic transport.
Bangladesh's biggest resource is its people. The biggest story in services is the impact of remittances. Remittances more than doubled to about USD 12.8 billion in 2012, making up over 10 per cent of GDP. Remittances are much larger than both aid flows and FDI. Bangladesh ranks seventh in the world behind India, China and the Philippines as a recipient of remittances. Most Bangladeshi workers go to the Gulf countries and are mainly recruited to fill low-skilled jobs. As a result, Bangladeshi workers remitted only USD 2,000 on a per capita basis, far lower than other Asian countries.
The role of the international community: Bangladesh has a large set of development challenges. The international community has a major role to play to facilitate Bangladesh's effort to mitigate these challenges.
The World Bank is the largest donor in the country including on Aid for Trade. Its most recent Country Report has indicated International Development Association (IDA) commitment of over USD 2.0 billion which includes USD 1.2 billion for the Padma Bridge [Padma Bridge financing was recently cancelled], financing for an additional 750 MW of power generation and support for Economic Zone Development and Public-Private Partnerships.
The EU has been providing support to Bangladesh to build its trade capacity. The work of the EU in supporting the building of standards, in the case of Bangladesh's shrimp exports, through the Bangladesh Quality Support Programme, is an excellent example of how Aid for Trade can support export development. Bangladesh has been proactive and also provided the TRIPS Council with a detailed Aid for Trade proposal for a budget of USD 71 million to effectively implement the TRIPS Agreement.
Of course Aid for Trade is no substitute for market access. The impact of the EU duty-free quota-free provisions under its Everything But Arms (EBA) scheme and the simplification of its rules of origin has had a very significant impact on Bangladesh. In contrast, the US GSP (Generalised System of Preferences) scheme (2009), according to the WTO Secretariat Report, still does not include products of export interest to Bangladesh such as apparel and clothing, footwear and leather products. As a consequence, 99.6 per cent of Bangladesh's exports to the US in 2009 entered with Most Favoured Nation (MFN) duties. In the case of Japan 98 per cent of Bangladesh's exports in 2010 were eligible for duty-free treatment. In the case of China 92 per cent of all Bangladesh's exports to China entered through the duty-free quota-free programme for the LDCs in 2010. India's duty-free quota-free programme for the LDCs will cover 85 per cent of its tariff lines by 2012 according to the WTO Secretariat.
Regional integration: Vision 2021 states that Bangladesh is strategically positioned to become a regional economic and commercial hub. Perhaps here is the greatest potential for the rapid and sustainable development of Bangladesh. With India in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and China in the Asia-Pacific Trade Agreement (APTA), Bangladesh has access to two of the world's largest and most dynamic emerging economies within its region. India and China have already provided concessional lines of credit for regional projects, according to the WTO Report. A development integration approach that combines market integration with cooperation in infrastructure development and industrial capacity cooperation through regional value chains, such as is being developed in the Mekong Delta Region and Southern and Eastern Africa, will arguably yield the greatest benefits for Bangladesh.
Conclusion: Bangladesh clearly has Vision and it has a Plan. The Perspective Plan of Bangladesh 2010-21: Making Vision a Reality spells this out clearly. In both the Perspective Plan and the Sixth Five Year Plan, Bangladesh has identified a number of development targets, including on product and trade diversification, infrastructure development and regional economic development. There is no shortage of creativity and innovation in Bangladesh. Bangladesh is well known for its creativity in contemporary literature, music and art. Professor Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize winning philosopher and economist, has his heritage in Bangladesh. It is also the home of the celebrated founder of the Grameen Bank, Professor Muhammad Yunus, another Nobel Prize winner.
Today it might not be an overstatement to announce that Bangladesh is an Asian Tiger; and this Bengal Tiger is on the move! It will build its own development path by a process of 'self-discovery'. It will meet its target to become a middle income country by 2021. It will become an emerging economy of the 21st Century.
The writer is Ambassador and Permanent Representative of South Africa to the WTO during the recently held Trade Policy Review of Bangladesh in the WTO
Financial Express :: Financial Newspaper of Bangladesh
@UKBengali
@eastwatch
@iajdani
@animelive
@CaPtAiN_pLaNeT
@Moander
@Madx
@ShadowFaux
@DURJOY
@RiasatKhan
@sepoi
@PlanetSoldier
@saleen_s7
@Skallagrim
and also @LaBong (due to the Amartya Sen reference)
Last edited by a moderator:
