The country is set for a lower GDP growth this year due to a precarious political situation, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Tuesday.

The multilateral lender tipped the country's GDP to grow at 5.8 percent in 2013 and 6 percent in 2014 in its World Economic Outlook released on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the World Bank and IMF currently being held in Washington. The GDP growth in 2012 stood at 6.1 percent.

For fiscal 2013-14, the IMF expects the GDP growth to be 5.5 percent, signifi-cantly less than the government target of 7.2 percent.

"The political uncertainty and probable violence centring on the ensuing national elections would cause less growth," Zahid Hussain, lead economist of the World Bank's Dhaka office, told The Daily Star.

Zaid Bakht, research director of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), said the political uncertainty has reined in private investment and with the approaching Jatiya Sangsad election public investment, too, is likely to decrease.

"Bureaucracy will develop sluggishness as the government's whole attention would be on the polls."

Bakht, also a director of the state-owned Sonali Bank, said the investment is not picking up despite pressure from the board to increase loan disbursement.

The IMF was also cautious about the perspectives for emerging markets without

sliding into pessimism over the impact of US monetary policy on growth.

"Medium-term prospects for emerging market economies are weaker," the IMF said.

Growth rates in emerging market and developing economies are now down some three percentage points from 2010 levels, mostly due to a slowdowns in Brazil, China, and India, the IMF said.

"Projections for 2016 real GDP levels for Brazil, China, and India have been successively reduced by some 8 to 14 percent over the past two years," the organisation said.

The IMF also reduced China's 2013 growth forecast by 0.2 points to 7.6 percent and the 2014 forecast by 0.4 points to 7.3 percent.

India's 2013 growth forecast was cut sharply by 1.8 points to 3.8 percent and the 2014 forecast reduced by 1.1 points to 5.1 percent.