Bangladesh will have to maintain a 9 per cent average real GDP growth for 20 years after 2021 to fulfil its vision of becoming a high income country by 2041, suggests an official estimate.In the growth path, Bangladesh has to remove extreme poverty and attain upper middle income status by 2031 and cut moderate poverty rate below 5 per cent and attain high income status by 2041.General Economics Division (GED) made the preliminary estimate at a meeting of the steering committee on second perspective held at NEC auditorium Thursday.The top public think tank is set to prepare the second perspective plan for 2021-2041 period to help prepare 8th five-year plan which will be first attempts towards attaining the Vision 2041.‘Our second perspective plan is going to a historic plan because it will raise our status to a developed country’s level,’ commented planning minister MA Mannan at a post-meeting press briefing.‘We’ve to plan for future investment, employment, literacy, use of technology and other socio-economic sectors for achieving the expected goals,’ he added.He cited that the existing investment shortfall is going to a major concern during the execution of the second perspective plan.‘Attaining the second perspective plan growth and other socio-economic objectives would be extremely challenging because, if realised, it would probably be an unprecedented outcome in the world economic history,’ GED observed in its paper.It has estimated to raise the investment level to GDP’s 46 per cent by 2041 where it is still close to 32 per cent which fell short of 37 per cent target set in first perspective plan ending in 2021.GED member Shamsul Alam, however, thinks that there won’t be that much investment shortfall as planned for first plan, saying that the level will rise to 34 to 36 per cent by 2021 which will be close to target.Besides, Bangladesh has to be a climate change and other natural disasters resilient country alongside becoming a knowledge hub country and a skill-based society.Alam added that they have projected that by 2041 industry sector’s contribution to national GDP would be 46 per cent while agriculture’s contribution is likely to fall to only 5 per cent.According to the estimate, planned public investment has a key role to play in creating enabling environment to lure private investment and FDI for raising the overall investment level.At the same time, gross national savings level will have to be raised by 15 percentage points to 46.7 per cent to reach the ambitious goal.The planning minister added that improving good governance and more empowering local administration will also be very crucial to attaining the target.
