Bangladesh's economic growth rebounded to 6.12 per cent in the third quarter of the just-concluded fiscal year as all three broad sectors performed well to pull the economy from a preceding gloom, official data showed.
The gross domestic product (GDP) has been estimated to have recovered in the Q3 (January-March period) after a collapse to 3.78 per cent in the preceding Q2 covering October-December of the last fiscal, according to Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) provisional data released Tuesday.
In the Q1 spanning July-September period of three months, the GDP growth at constant price was estimated at 6.01 per cent, the official statistics show.
The GDP growth in the aforesaid Q3 on a point-to-point basis also looked yet better than in the same period of the previous FY2023. The Q3 GDP growth in FY2023 had hit a rock-bottom 2.3 per cent.
Meanwhile, the BBS had recently also released the provisional annual GDP data for the immediate-past fiscal year 2023-24 that showed an estimated growth of 5.82 per cent, 0.04-percentage-point higher than the actual economic growth in the previous FY2023.
At current price, the size of the Q3FY2024 GDP amounted to Tk 13.478 trillion. In the Q1 and Q2 of the last fiscal, the size of the GDP was Tk 13.099 trillion and Tk 11.875 trillion respectively.
Economic growth in the industrial sector, which accounts for 40.42 per cent of the country's gross domestic product or GDP, jumped to about 7.03 per cent in the Q3 (Jan-Mar) of FY2024 while it was 4.98 per cent during the same period a year ago.
Similarly, agriculture also performed better in the Q3 with an expansion of 5.46 per cent in the Q3 last fiscal from a paltry 1.88 per cent a year ago.
The services sector, which contributes 50.23 per cent to GDP, too got elevated with a 4.97-percent growth in the January-March period from a subdued 1.47 per cent in the corresponding period, the BBS data show.
"The country's economy is gowing through a rough weather as the major macroeconomic indicators, including export, remittance, foreign-exchange reserves, import, private-sector credit, capital machine-and raw-material imports, employment and investment, were reading much lower than needed," says an FE analysis.
For the first time, Bangladesh's economic growth had been performing well over the last few years with the growth rate having been recorded in 7.0-percent club till the FY2022.
For the impact of the Covid-19, the GDP growth in FY2020 was down at 3.45 per cent. Despite a recovery in the consecutive two fiscals in FY2021 and FY2022, the economic growth fell below 6.0-percent bracket in FY2022 and in FY2023.
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