No plan to revise GDP growth target right now: Kamal

Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal said there is no plan to revise the GDP growth target right now, as he believes the government will be able to maintain the estimated growth rate for 2021-22 fiscal year.

"I hope we can maintain the estimate we made," the minister said while responding to a query at a virtual briefing after the meeting of the cabinet committee on purchase today.

In the current fiscal, the government set the gross domestic product (GDP) growth target at 7.2 per cent.

According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), the provisional GDP growth was 5.2 per cent and in the final calculation, the country's economy grew 3.51 per cent in the 2019-20 fiscal year.

Responding to a query about whether the government will revise the GDP growth target as it was low in 2019-20 fiscal, Kamal said: "If the economy is seriously affected, then I will definitely revise the growth target. But not at the moment."

Kamal said though the GDP growth rate was low last fiscal, it was the highest among other Asian countries and different Asian countries such as India, Pakistan and Nepal have seen negative growth in 2019-20 fiscal.

"In Vietnam, the growth has been 2.9 per cent. Bangladesh is more than that. So Bangladesh has done well. Even during the Covid, the rate of Bangladesh's growth is above all due to the untiring efforts of the people," he said.

Responding to a question that the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), a few days ago, stated that the magic of remittances was coming to an end, Kamal said when 2 per cent incentive was announced for remittance in 2019, many people took a stand against it.

"They said it was not possible to increase remittances with incentives. When remittances began to grow, they said it (remittance flow) would not sustain. And now they say this magic is over," he said.

He said remittances flow was $13.1 billion in FY2018-19 and after giving incentives, remittances hit to $18.2 billion in the 2019-20 fiscal year.

"And in 2020-21 fiscal, remittances hit $24.7 billion. It's incredible," the minister said.

Remittance flow has slowed down a bit in July. In this context, Kamal said, remittance flow can be ups and downs.

However, in the first nine days of August, remittances reached $567 million which was $450 million at the same time last year, he said.

"Growth is much higher here. As a result, those who are talking about different things will say. We will do our job," he added.