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Per capita income leaps to $599

High remittance flow seen as major contributor

Rejaul Karim Byron
Per capita income in Bangladesh has shot up to $599 this fiscal year from the previous year's $523, demonstrating that the country's overall income has significantly gone up despite many odds.
The odds include fall in growth by one to three percentage points in agriculture, manufacturing, construction and service sectors.
According to the latest national accounts data of Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), the increase in per capita income is very significant because it (per capita income) used to be $440 in
fiscal 2003-04, $463 in '04-05 and $476 in '05-06.
"Per capita income marked a rise by nearly 14 percent due to high growth of remittance," said Executive Director of the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) Mustafizur Rahman. "This is the same reason why our per capita income marked
a rise of 12 percent in the previous fiscal year."
Bangladesh's achieving the status of a middle-income country from that of a Least Developed Country (LDC) is not very far away. A country remains an LDC till its per capita income remains below $ 750.
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The BBS data show that growth in agriculture and forestry was 3.47 percent in 2007-08. In the previous year it was 4.69 percent.
I'he fall in growth occurred due to Sidr and two consecutive floods. Final estimate of Aus production this fiscal year stood at 15 lakh tonnes, which is close to previous year's production. But production of Ainan has been 97 lakh tonnes, which is 10.2 percent lower than that last year. It is estimated that production of Boro will be 1.75 crore tonnes, 17 percent higher than last year's.
Animal farming marked a decline by 3.08 percentage points to 2.41 percent in 2007-08 from the previous year's 5.49 percent.
A Bangladesh Bank (BB) report --Macro. Economic Outlook Fiscal Year 08 - says, ''Despite massive damage to Aman production due to two devastating floods and the cyclone and the losses in the poultry sector resulting from the outbreak of avian flu, agriculture sector is expected to grow slightly above its trend rate due to bumper Boro production."
The BBS data show the manufacturing sector marked a growth of 7.42 percent- which is down by 2.3 percentage points from that of the previous fiscal year's 9.72 percent.
Sources said the manufacturing sector suffered from declining exports in the first quarter this year.
It improved in the second and third quarters.
In construction sector, growth dropped by 1.08 percentage points to 5.93 percent this fiscal year from tiie previous year’s 7.01 percent. The downtrend is caused by sharp increase in the price of construction materials including mild steel rod, cement, brick, bitumen, and paint. "Increased costs of raw materials contributed to higher prices of key construction materials creating an adverse impact on overall construction activities," said the BB report on macro economy.
Growth in wholesale and retail trade was 7.2 percent, financial intermediations 8.97 percent, real estate, renting and business activities 3.59, public administration and defence 7.15, education 7.88 and in health and social works 7.50 percent. The growth in all of these sectors was however lower by less than one percentage point than that in the previous fiscal year.
Growth in mining and quarrying was 8.61 percent, fishing 4.11, electricity, gas and water supply 4.88, hotel and restaurants 7.58, transport, and storage and communication 8.69 percent. The sectors grew by 0.5 to maximum 2.78 percent points from that of the previous year.
All these contributed to the nation's GDP growth of 6.21 percent in 2007-08 compared to 6.43 percent in the previous year.