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Roundup: Bangladesh approves new five-year development plan

Xinhua, October 21, 2015 Adjust font size:

The highest economic policy-making body of Bangladesh Tuesday approved a new five-year plan with the theme "Accelerating Growth, Empowering Citizens".

Bangladesh's 7th five-year plan was approved at a meeting of the country's National Economic Council with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the chair on Tuesday here in the capital of Dhaka.

Bangladesh's Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal told journalists after the meeting that the new plan, which starts in the 2015-16 fiscal year (July 2015-June 2016) and ends in 2019-20 (July 2019 and June 2020), aims at creating more employment, expediting poverty reduction efforts and strengthening people's resilience to combat climate induced calamities which intensified in recent years.

He said the plan also puts focus more on the sustainable development of the country.

To implement the development initiatives under the new plan, Kamal said Bangladesh will need 31.9 trillion taka(about 410 billion U.S. dollars), 90.4 percent of which will be mobilized from local sources as per the estimate.

To reach the development target, he said the government plans to invest 7,252 billion taka while it eyes 24,651 billion taka investment from private sector.

According to the minister, the government eyes to create 1.2 million new jobs over the next five years to boost its efforts to reach a double-digit economic growth target by 2021.

The average annual economic growth has been estimated at 7.4 percent over the next five years and 8 percent in the last year of the new plan, he said.

"Our target is now to reduce poverty rate from 24.8 percent to 18.6 percent and extreme poverty to 8.9 percent by 2019-2020 fiscal year."

He said that PM Hasina instructed relevant authorities in the meeting to prepare the next plan with target to upgrade Bangladesh as a developed country 2041. Endit