Get World Bank Growth Report Of Bangladesh

The idea of inclusive growth emerged after high rates of growth in national income had failed to generate sustained improvements in human welfare. An economy cannot grow in a sustainable manner unless the benefits of growth are shared fairly among the individuals or groups in society. Improvements in human welfare are largely shaped by non-income dimensions, e.g. health, education, and gender relations, in addition to income and wealth status.

Given the importance of both income and non-income dimensions to human welfare, equitable distribution of resources along these dimensions among individuals is, therefore, critical to the multidimensional concept of inclusive growth.

Inclusive growth is viewed by the World Bank through the lens of pace and pattern of economic growth. While it is well recognized in the institution's approach to development that rapid pace of economic growth is necessary for dealing with absolute poverty, growth should be broad-based across sectors and inclusive of the country's labor force in order to be sustainable in the long run. Implying a direct link between the micro and macro determinants of growth, the World Bank's idea of inclusive growth focuses on productive employment.

While the World Bank's approach to understanding inclusive growth is generally concerned with sustained economic growth, inclusiveness requires equality of opportunity in terms of access to resources, markets, and an efficient regulatory environment for businesses and individuals.

With a view to promoting inclusive economic growth, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has developed its corporate strategy considering inclusive growth as a concept that goes beyond broad-based growth. In this framework, inclusive growth is supposed to create new economic opportunities as well as ensure equal access to the opportunities, particularly for the poor.

Considering the fact that more equal societies perform better in development, the UNDP defines inclusive growth in terms of participation and benefit-sharing, the former referring to everyone's ability to participate in decision-making over the growth process and the latter referring to equitable distribution of growth benefits.

With a view to accelerating economic growth and empowering every citizen, Bangladesh adopted its Seventh Five-Year Plan (7FYP) for the period of 2016-2020. With considerable success of the Sixth Five-Year Plan (2011-2015), the government of Bangladesh has set a number of socioeconomic and development targets to be attained over the period of the 7FYP. The 7FYP defines inclusive growth as “growth that is both sustainable, broad-based in terms of employment opportunities and reaches out to people on the margin.”

Bangladesh experienced sustained growth averaging 6.3 percent per year during the period of the Sixth Five-Year Plan and successfully maintained more than seven percent growth over the last three consecutive years (2016-2018). Categorized as a low middle-income country in July 2015 and with a current per-capita national income of USD 1,752 (2017-18), Bangladesh has maintained a stable macroeconomic performance in terms of contained inflationary pressure, budget deficit, exchange rate volatility, ratio of public debt to gross domestic product and significant poverty reduction at the national level.

However, the country is facing macroeconomic challenges mainly in regard to growing pressure on the balance of payment and turbulence in the financial sector. In terms of reduction in income poverty, Bangladesh has witnessed a drop of incidence to 24.3 percent in 2016 from 31.5 in 2010, and extreme poverty to 12.9 percent from 16.5 percent.