International Monetary Fund (IMF) has advised updating gross domestic product (GDP) information every 3 months, as per international standard.The visiting IMF delegation had a meeting with Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) on Tuesday. The IMF team also trained BBS officials on utilizing some tools for calculating GDP.
The IMF team was led by its Mission Chief Rahul Anand. BBS Director General (Additional Secretary) Md. Matiar Rahman led its team in the discussion. According to BBS, the organization will start providing quarterly information as per IMF recommendation.
Bangladesh’s GDP growth is measured with FY 2005-06 as the base year. An initiative was taken in 2017 to change it to FY 2015-16.However, in the last 5 years, BBS could not change the base year.
Currently, BBS provides GDP growth data twice a year. IMF has suggested scrapping this method and publishing it four times a year, so that developments in the financial state of the country are always known.
August inflation data has been released late this time. The IMF wanted to know whether the delay in releasing the data was due to high inflation. BBS Director General informed them in detail about this. Bangladesh seeks $4.5 billion credit from IMF as budgetary support as foreign exchange reserves went down in the recent months.
