\\\'Growth with equity\\\' targeted

The government has started preparations for the Seventh Five-Year Plan for the financial year (FY) 2015-16 to FY2019-20 with a view to 'accelerating growth with equity', officials said Friday.
The General Economics Division (GED) of the Planning Commission has begun the work to frame the document with a view to finalising it by June next year.
The process of Bangladesh's development is now following the Sixth Five-Year Plan (FYP), being implemented from FY 2011 to FY 2015.
 "The country is heading towards the right direction. We will now focus on inclusive growth across the country so that all the vulnerable pockets can get rid of poverty and hunger," said a senior GED official.
He said the country has fallen short of achieving the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth target till last FY2013-14. This would be taken into account in the next FYP aimed at achieving double-digit growth by the year 2021.
According to the Sixth FYP, the government targets 8.0 per cent GDP growth by FY2015, which is impossible to attain at this moment.
In the last FY2013-14, the Bangladesh economy expanded at 6.12 per cent rate, 1.08 percentage points lower than the 7.20 per cent growth target.
 "Actually, Bangladesh is doing comparatively better than other countries amid global financial meltdown and Euro-zone crisis over the last few years. It has been maintaining more than 6.0 per cent growth over the last one decade," said GED Member Prof Shamsul Alam.
 "We are hopeful that the country's economy would be boosted further at a higher rate than the current achievement in the future years," he added.
GED officials said they have selected 21 thematic areas. They would prepare background papers for all the thematic areas.
Our thematic areas include background work on growth drivers, agriculture diversification strategy, public resource mobilisation strategy, strategy for mobilising foreign resources, capital market development, infrastructure development strategy, strategy for development of the SME sector in manufacturing, strategy for education and training, and improving governance and public institutions.
Another GED official said: "The Sixth FYP placed considerable emphasis on development strategy. The progress so far is slower than expected. The 7th FYP will take a more strategic approach to social protection in the light of resource constraints and explore ways to improve quality and implementation of social protection programmes."
 "Better targeting of programme benefits focused on the poor and the vulnerable will be emphasised. Innovative ways of funding social protection programmes based on international experiences will be explored.  Institutional implications of strengthening social protection programmes will be highlighted at the next FYP," he said.
 "We have selected some weaknesses of our economy during the 6th FYP execution period including sluggishness of the overall rate of investment, slower-than-targeted expansion of the infrastructure services, lower export growth, inability to spur the development of the SME sector in manufacturing and constraints relates to skill development of the labour force, the GED official added.
He said the upcoming 7th FYP will consider the above challenges so that the country could overcome those in the next five years and achieve double-digit GDP growth by 2021.
The government has framed the Perspective Plan of Bangladesh 2010-2021 to make the Vision 2021 a reality.
Bangladesh targets achieving a middle-income country status by 2021 through sustained annual GDP growth rate at 10 per cent by 2021, eradicating poverty to the extent of 13.5 per cent and boost literacy rate to 100 per cent.