The Planning Division arranges a seminar today (Thursday) to highlight and discuss the necessity of rebasing of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The seminar on 'Rebasing and Revision of GDP: Bangladesh Perspective' will be held at the NEC Conference Room in the city's Sher-e-Bangla Nagar area, reports BSS.
Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal will grace the seminar as the chief guest, while PM's Economic Affairs Adviser Dr Moshiur Rahman, State Minister for Finance and Planning MA Mannan and economist Prof
Wahiduddin Mahmud will remain present as the special guests.
Chaired by Planning Division Secretary M Ziaul Islam, expatriate economist Prof SR Osmani will present the keynote paper at the Seminar.
Prof Wahiduddin Mahmud and General Economics Division (GED) member of the Planning Commission Dr M Shamsul Alam will take part in the main discussion on the keynote presentation.
Planning Division Secretary M Ziaul Islam said the seminar would highlight the necessity of rebasing the GDP after a certain period of time alongside underscoring the need for timely revision of the GDP base year.
According to the officials at the Statistics and Informatics Division, work is underway to rebase and revise the GDP base year to 2015-16 from the existing 2005-2006, incorporating many more emerging areas of economic
activity into the GDP calculation.
Once measured according to the new base, the country's GDP size and per capita income will go up.
The changes in size of the real GDP will be mainly due to the inclusion of some new sectors in the calculation and price changes between the two periods.
In Bangladesh, the usual practice was to revise GDP base year in every 10 years. In 2013, the base year was changed from 1995-96 to 2005-06.
The BBS, tasked with the job, has already framed and has been implementing a project to rebase the GDP base year titled 'Modernisation of National Accounts Statistics Project' with an estimated cost of Tk 110.2 million (11.02 crore).
The BBS had earlier completed the latest rebase with its calculation yardstick just four years back (in 2013) by fixing 2005-06 as new base period to replace 1995-96.
The national statistical agency, mandated for measuring GDP and other indicators, did its latest in 2013 after 13 years.
Bangladesh's per-capita income went up in line with the increase in GDP size.
