GDP growth maintains healthy trend: BB review

Country's GDP (gross domestic product) growth is currently maintaining a healthy trend despite rising inflation that stood at 8.36 per cent in March this year, reports UNB. The actual GDP growth will be very close to 7.0 per cent in the current fiscal and is likely to exceed 7.0 per cent next year, according to an economic review of the Bangladesh Bank (BB) released Monday. It says expansion of agriculture, manufacturing and service sectors supported by increasing export earnings and growth in remittance inflow put the country's GDP growth on firm-footing. The central bank in its two-year review observed that increasing inflation and the average annual inflation rate reached 8.36 per cent in March 2011 as against 7.69 per cent in March 2009. The country achieved 40.31 per cent export growth in July-March period of the current fiscal as compared to 24.51 per cent during the same period of the last fiscal (2009-10). The wage earners' remittance totalled US$ 8611 million in July-March period of the current fiscal with record US$ 1103 million remittance inflow alone in March, which was 4.12 per cent higher than that of the previous fiscal. Some US$ 7034 million was remitted in July-March period of the last fiscal. Meanwhile, the foreign exchange reserve stood at US$ 11.22 billion as on April 26 while the amount was only US$ 6.0 billion two years back. The central bank review also observed rapid expansion of the banking sector. It says banks opened 764 new branches in last two years. There were 6900 branches across the country until March 2009 and the number reached at 7664 in February of this year.