Bangladesh needs to undertake time-befitting measures to develop a strong structural foundation to graduate from Least Developed Country (LDC) status, said speakers.
To build a robust foundation, major actions are required in three areas—microeconomic management, sectoral priorities set up and institutional governance build-up, they added.
The recommendations came Saturday at a public dialogue titled “Bangladesh’s Graduation from the LDC Group: Pitfalls and Promises”, organised by Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) held in the capital.
“Bangladesh’s core focus should be on raising productivity—both within and between sectors to reduce the gap with other competitor countries,” CPD research director Khondaker Golam Moazzem said.
He was speaking while presenting his keynote on “‘Business as usual’ trend of structural transformation: can it ensure graduation with momentum?”
A B Mirza Azizul Islam, former advisor to the caretaker government chaired the session. Foreign secretary Md Shahidul Haque, lead economist at World Bank Bangladesh Zahid Hussain, Swedish ambassador to Dhaka Charlotta Schlyter, among others, were present.
CPD distinguished fellow Mustafizur Rahman also present a keynote paper on “Pathway to Bangladesh’s Sustainable LDC Graduation: Prospects, Challenges and Strategy”.
The graduation would not be an unmixed blessing for Bangladesh as majority of the LDCs suffer severe transformation deficits, he said, adding Bangladesh has experienced slow progress in structural transformation over the last decades.
The share of agriculture in GDP has significantly decreased but their share in total employment did not decrease that much, the paper showed, adding majority of the growth in productivity resulted from the increase of intra-sector productivity rather than inter-sector productivity.
To encourage structural change, he suggested measures to encourage higher investment and foreign direct investment in export-oriented manufacturing.
