Bangladesh Nationalist Party on Tuesday termed ‘imaginary’ the 7.05 per cent gross domestic product growth projected by the government last week.
BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir came up with the comment at a news briefing at the party chairperson’s Gulshan office.
He said the GDP growth rate published by Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics was a ‘stunt’ of the government merely to cling to power by confusing people.
‘So they are (government) confusing people giving ‘false’ statistics,’ he alleged.
Fakhrul urged people not to be confused with the BBS statistics and noted that people knew better about their standard of life.
Most of the indicators did not reflect the GDP growth at more than seven per cent growth in the outgoing fiscal, he said.
He claimed that 7.06 per cent GDP growth was achieved during 2005-06 fiscal, the last year of the BNP-led four-party alliance government.
The BNP secretary general alleged that hurried publishing of estimate was ‘intentional’.
The government kept BBS under pressure to disclose different important information, he added.
He said the current macro-economic indicators were not generating so such hope.
Fakhrul said growth of the GDP was directly related to investment and import of industrial raw materials and machineries declined in the same period of the current fiscal compared to July-February of the last financial year.
Under this situation, increase of GDP growth was unrealistic, he said, adding that at the same time investment was not taking place in private sector.
He said as per the government statistics investment in private sector declined to 21.78 per cent of GDP in the current fiscal compared to 22.07 per cent of GDP of the last year.
He said under this negative picture of private sector investment, claim of GDP growth was ‘inconsistent’.
BNP standing committee member Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain, Abdul Moyeen Khan, BNP chairperson’s advisory council members Amir Koshru Mahmud Chowdhury and Osman Farruk, among others, were present.
Source: New Age
