Bangladesh Bank Governor Atiur Rahman has expressed optimism about the country's economic outlook and said the GDP growth will cross 7 percent in both current and next fiscal years, thanks to better performances by industrial and services sectors.

The central bank chief said Bangladesh's total external trade is on course to exceed $50 billion in fiscal 2011, a volume nearly half the annual gross domestic product in size.

In an interview with The Daily Star recently, Rahman talked on the overall economic situation on the eve of announcing the national budget for the next fiscal year.

He said the rise in growth (around 40 percent) in external trade and a corresponding boost from the services sector should easily translate into a near double-digit real output in manufacturing and services.

Making an estimate of around 7 percent overall real GDP growth in fiscal 2011 is entirely plausible, the governor said.

He also said most conjectures of various quarters about Bangladesh's likely real GDP growth in fiscal 2011 are putting forward figures somewhat below the 6.7 percent targeted in the budget presumably from caution not to err on the side of over optimism.

Rahman said few dispute the good output performance in agriculture, but most of the forecasts proffer low growth estimates for manufacturing and services, referring to past trends and infrastructure constraints.

The governor said these overlook the progress in remedial efforts and the reality of strong growth in external trade (in both exports and imports).

He said, in the last fiscal year the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) in its provisional estimate put the GDP growth at 5.8 percent but the agency has now found it to be 6.04 percent in a final calculation.

In the current fiscal year, the provisional estimate of the BBS is 6.66 percent. But the central bank's forecast is that the GDP growth will cross 7 percent.

The government has already revised the next fiscal year's GDP growth target from an earlier 7 percent to 7.2 percent.

Source: The Daily Star/Bangladesh/Jun, 04, 2011