Speakers applauded Bangladesh's impressive progress in socio-economic sectors and parallelly expressed their concern over the lack of skilled manpower and lower tax-GDP.
They said despite having an abundant low-cost labour force, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and many local investors are hiring a large number of skilled manpower from abroad due to lack of it in the country.
They made the remarks while speaking at the conference of the International Growth Centre (IGC) on 'Resilient and Resurgent Bangladesh, held in the hotel intercontinental, in Dhaka on Wednesday.
At the conference, Bangladesh's sustainable economic growth in a changing climate was highlighted. Two keynote papers were presented at the event in two segments.
In the maiden season, a keynote paper on 'The future of works in Bangladesh' was presented by Dr Masrur Reaz, chairman of policy exchange and policy adviser to IGC.
Mohsina Yasmin, executive member of Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA) and Dr Muhammad Yunus, senior research fellow of BIDS, spoke as expert panelists in the first session.
Jonathan Leape, executive director of the IGC, moderated the first session.
The keynote on strengthening domestic resource mobilisation and cost recovery strategies for self-reliant Bangladesh was presented by Dr MA Razzaque, chairman of RAPID, a research think tank, at the second session.
Dr Atiur Rahman, former governor of Bangladesh Bank (BB), moderated it.
Dr M Abu Eusuf, a Dhaka University professor of Development Studies department, Oliver Harman, cities economist of the IGC, Md Iqbal Hossain, NBR member, Dr Mustafizur Rahman, distinguished fellow of CPD and Dr Nasir Uddin Ahmed, former chairman of NBR, put forwarded their views from the expert panellists at the event.
Both the presentations and the expert panellists underscored the need for the good governance, digitalization of NBR and enhancement of allocation in the education sector to generate a skilled manpower.
Praising the economic growth of Bangladesh, the speakers said the net of the country’s GDP was only $44 billion post the liberation but it now stood at $465 billion now.
The exports of goods, services and earning remittance are increasing gradually, but creation of employment opportunities are not expanding as required, the speakers observed.
They pointed out that 1.93 million youths emerge in the job market every year in Bangladesh amid the limited job sectors.
They also emphasized the need for diversification of product s as currently 94 percent earning from the export in Bangladesh come from 5 particular products.
Regarding the lower tax GDP, the speakers said 20 million people are paying holding tax while 2.2 million people are submitting their tax returns.
The government had plans to increase tax GDP to 14 percent by 2022, rather it decreased by 2 percent to 7 percent from previous 9 percent. This is the scenario of government resources mobilization, they said.
There are a lot of opportunities to grow revenue, but it is not happening due to lack of time befitting policy and political commitment, they said.
Prominent economists, government officials, researchers, and representatives of international development partners, were present at the conference.
The programme is funded by UK Aid and directed by London School of Economics (LSE) and the University of Oxford.