The New Nation - Internet Edition

ECONOMIC REPORTER

Country's gross domestic product (GDP) rose more than 16 per cent to $79 billion in the fiscal year to June 2008, despite double digit inflation, huge losses by state-run enterprises and natural disasters, a senior official said yesterday.

Per capita income also rose 15 per cent to $599, Mohammad Rafiqul Islam, deputy economic adviser, said.

The total value of the GDP and per capita income for the 2006-07 were $68 billion and $520 respectively.

"Repeated natural calamities, abnormal hikes of import bills and demand-driven upward inflation were the major challenges during the fiscal year," Islam told reporters.

Through the year the inflation was almost 10 per cent due to external price shocks, he said.

Owing to price hikes for imported goods and depreciation in the local currency, overall losses of state-run enterprises jumped 131 percent higher from 2006-07 to reach 53 billion taka ($774 million) in 2007-08.

Total losses incurred by 44 state enterprises were nearly 23 billion taka ($336 million) in 2006-07, said the government's annual economic review released on Wednesday.

Two state-run enterprises in the energy sector alone incurred 73 billion taka ($1.1 billion) losses, about 109 percent more than the previous year.

"Despite all the challenges, we enjoyed an improved external sector with relatively stable exchange rate, positive current account balance and higher foreign exchange reserves at the end of the just-ended fiscal year," Islam said, as he presented the review.

Healthy growth in export earnings, remittances inflow from expatriates, revenue income from the domestic sources, bumper production of boro rice, stable growth of capital market and overall stable growth in manufacturing and service sectors helped the economy to grow moderately, he said.

Bangladesh's more than 5 million expatriate workers sent home a record $7.94 billion in the fiscal year of 2007-08, nearly 33 percent higher than in previous year.

Also, export earnings in July-May, the first 11 months of 2007-08 financial year, grew 15.3 percent to $12.64 billion.

Bangladesh's tax revenues rose nearly 27 percent in the 2007-08 fiscal year from a year earlier to 472 billion taka ($7 billion).

Foreign exchange reserves stood at $6.15 billion at the end of June, 2008, the central bank said.