More than half the country's total population live in 'kutcha' houses, a Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) survey has found.
The first ever study titled "Survey on Occupied Residential Houses and Real Estate Services 2018,' was released on Monday at a launching ceremony held at the BBS auditorium, chaired by its director general Dr Krishna Gayen.
The BBS took into account the residential and non-residential housing services, and real estate establishment to measure the sector.
The BBS survey found the number of total residential houses to be 37.84 million.
Though 86 per cent of the country's households are owner-occupied, some 53 per cent of the families live in 'kutcha' houses, it said.
Only 15 per cent (14.91) of the households have 'pucca' homes and 31.33 per cent semi-pucca dwellings, according to the survey findings.
Of the pucca houses, 10.02 per cent are less than five storied and 4.89 per cent multistoried (five storied or above).
Kutcha houses are made up of mud, straw, wood, and dry leaves while pucca means dwellings that are designed to be solid and permanent, built of durable materials such as stone, brick, cement, concrete, metal, etc.
The survey said the country's 32.47 million households are owner-occupied when 4.62 million (12.21 per cent) rented.
A 0.25 million families are living in jhupris (structures made of temporary materials such as jute sack, plastic, rope, etc).
The comprehensive survey on the residential housing and real estate also showed the residential and real estate sector contributes 7.8 per cent or Tk 1.415 trillion to the country's gross domestic product (GDP) during the financial year 2016-17 (FY'17).
Project director of the survey Tufail Ahmed presented the key findings of the survey of FY'17, which was done using FY'16 as a base year.
He said using the FY'16 as the base-year, the agency has found the sector growing at a rate of 18.61 per cent.
Mr Ahmed, deputy director of national accounting wing of BBS, said the latest study will help the policymakers plan appropriately regarding the residential and real estate sector of the country.
The expansion of the sector might help increase the size of the country's GDP, he said.
The wing director Ziauddin Ahmed said they are likely to consider FY'16 to be the base-year for GDP calculation from the next financial year (FY'21).
He said now 21 sectors will be measured for counting GDP, which was 15 earlier.
He said the UN ISCI-4 has been used as standard for the survey. ISIC is the United Nations International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities.
"Earlier we have surveyed the real estate establishment alone using UN ISCI-3 as the standard in FY'13," he said.
However, the survey showed annual rental income from residential housing was Tk 893 billion, non-residential housing Tk 543 billion.
A total of 1.651 million people are engaged in the sector, of whom some 0.94 million in non-residential housing, 0.5 million residential housing and 0.17 million in the real estate sector.
Value addition by residential housing was the highest (Tk 759 billion), but non-residential housing comprises maximum employment, the survey showed.
Statistics and information management secretary Sourendra Nath Chakraborty was the chief guest while additional secretary Bikash Kisore Das, among others, spoke on the occasion.
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