Bangladesh’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate, aka economic growth, stood at 5.4 percent in a provisional estimate for the 2020-21, using a new or rather updated calculation of GDP with a newer, more relevant base year.

The government recently finalized 2015-16 as the new base year to calculate (GDP), and the principal statistical agency, the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) has been working to implement it. All national accounts will from now on be based on this new base year. Previously the government was using a base year of 2005-6.

In Bangladesh, the usual practice was to revise GDP base year every 10 years. The last time it was done was in 2013, when the base year was changed from 1995-96 to 2005-06.

Rebasing is important in emerging economies with large informal sectors such as Bangladesh to capture more and more sections of the informal economy under formal reporting of national income, besides new or budding sectors that are growing fast. The new estimate of GDP comprises 21 broad sectors instead of the previous 15.

A revised report of BBS shows the GDP of FY 2020-21 where over 20 crops of agriculture, emerging services like Uber, Pathao, household waste collection, real estate and construction sector have been added as new.

The GDP growth in the fiscal year 2019-20 was 3.45 percent. At that time the total GDP was Tk26, 501 billion, BBS data found.

The BBS has found this picture of growth in determining the growth of the last financial year from the base year 2015-16.

The information was presented to the Prime Minister at the ECNEC meeting on Tuesday.

The planning minister said the net of various products as GDP has expanded under the new base year. As a result, per capita income has increased. At the same time, GDP growth has increased.

The average per capita income has risen to $2,554 from $2,226 previously.

Agriculture sector: About 20 new crops have been added to the crop sub-sector with all the data included in this sector for GDP calculation. New crops include dragon fruit, strawberry, capsicum, latkan, kachushak, sharufa, malta etc. Cattle and poultry production data, new survey data in the forest sector and other up-to-date information have been included. As a result value addition from the agriculture sector increased in the GDP by 14.80 per cent.

Industrial Sector: Earlier, all the data included in this sector for calculating GDP included updated data from New Manufacturing Industry Survey (SMI) and construction sector survey, data from household waste collection. Overall current prices of value addition in the industrial sector have increased by 36.1 per cent.

Services sector: New survey of transport sector, Uber, Pathao, data of new private helicopter companies, new survey of real estate sector, data of mobile banks, agent banks, information of non-profit organizations of government and education and health sector have all been included. Overall, the size of value addition in the services sector showed growth by 14.3 percent in the sector.