Via Frontrera News, a report on Bangladesh’s growing economic presence:
Bangladesh (FM) has been seeing its economic prowess grow. Its economic growth stood at 7.11% for fiscal year 2015-16 – higher than the 7.05% projected earlier by the government. This was also the first time its economic growth stood above the 7% mark. In the previous fiscal year, economic growth had risen at 6.55%. In Bangladesh, a fiscal year begins in July and ends in June of the succeeding year.
After the release of the final figures, Planning Minister Mostafa Kamal had said that “to the best of my knowledge, this is the highest GDP growth rate achieved by the country after independence [1971].
The growth was a surprise to the upside not only for the government but for agencies such as the World Bank as well. For 2016-17, the government has set a target of 7.2% growth even though the World Bank sees a 6.8% pace. Meanwhile, the Asian Development Bank – whose revised estimates of 7.1% growth for 2015-16 were quite close to the actual figure – estimates a 6.9% pace for the current fiscal.
Projections by PwC
PricewaterhouseCoopers, in a report titled ‘The long view: how will the global economic order change by 2050?’ estimated that Bangladesh can potentially become the world’s 28thlargest economy by 2030, up from 31st in 2016.
It further stated that the country could become the 23rd largest economy by 2050 with an average annual growth of ~5%. If it does so, it would supersede countries like Australia, Spain, South Africa, and Malaysia.
On a PPP basis, PwC predicted that the economic output of Bangladesh could grow from $628 billion in 2016 to $1.3 trillion in 2030, and to $3.1 trillion in 2050.
With this broad overview of the country’s economic present and possible future, let’s look at how the regional economic heavyweight, Russia, fits into Bangladesh’s emerging economic picture.