Jasim Uddin Haroon
Government's statistical agency has initiated rebasing country's GDP in the current year with 2015-16 as the new baseline, encompassing lot many emerging areas of economic activities.
Official sources said the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) has decided to go whole hog with the rebasing mission under IMF guidelines.
A period exercise called rebasing which includes new economic activities in the GDP is meant for reflecting an accurate picture of the economy. It usually shoots the size of the economy up by 10-20 per cent. And it helps raise the per-capita income.
People familiar with the developments at the BBS said the authority wants the completion of the rebasing within this December so that it could be applied for the current year's GDP measurement. The government has projected the GDP growth for the fiscal 2016-17 at 7.2 per cent.
But some at the BBS said it would be very hard for them to complete the spadework within such a short period. They said they need at least three years for such type of rebasing the GDP, arguing that actual data are available in two to three years.
"We get actual data in three years from government, so it will be challenging for us," said one official at the BBS accounting wing.
However, top officials at the National Accounting Wing at the BBS struck a high note of optimism, saying that they have already raised manpower to get to the goal.
"We seriously want to measure the 2016-17 provisional GDP figure under the 2015-16 baseline," said Abul Kalam Azad, director at the National Accounting Wing.
He said the BBS had already completed 10-12 new surveys to that end.
They said Bangladesh's service sector is growing and there are many new areas, like e-commerce, e-banking, and mobile banking, which are yet to be measured with the country's GDP. The BBS also has planned to prepare a service index for the first time to measure the yearly updates in the country's service sector.
This index will help measure accurately the yearly updates in the service sector. BBS usually estimates through surveys.
A delegation from the BBS has already visited China to get familiarised with such indexing over there.
They said there are many new agricultural products like mushroom, strawberry, dragon fruits and similar others that remained outside the GDP measurement.
They also said there are many garment accessories' business and its by-products and ship-breaking outside the calculation.
The BBS had earlier completed the latest rebase as its calculation yardstick just three years back (in 2013) by fixing 2005-06 as new base period to replace 1995-96.
The national statistical organisation, mandated for measuring GDP and other indicators, did its latest in 2013 after 13 years.
Bangladesh's per-capita income went up in line with the increase in GDP size. The per-capita income was estimated at US$1466. It was $955 in 201-12 measured under the old base year 1995-96.
Following such rise in the gross national income, the World Bank classed Bangladesh as a lower-middle-income country (LMIC).
The BBS people at the accounting wing said an IMF consultant had worked with them on it, and a new IMF consultant of Georgia joined the team.
GDP across the world has to be measured under the guidelines of the IMF (International Monetary Fund) to synchronise with the global economic activities.
Currently, Bangladesh uses SNA (system of national accounting) 1993 which has 15 broad sectors with adoption of SNA-2008.
A technical committee headed by Professor Dr Wahiduddin Mahmood and a sub-committee to validate the data were also formed.
    jasimharoon@yahoo.com [Read More]

—–
Source: The Financial Express