Soumya Bhowmick:
The Bangladesh economy is one of the finest examples of a remarkable development story characterised by a ‘model of poverty reduction,’ while transforming into one of the fastest-growing economies in the world in the last decade. During Bangladesh’s liberation in 1971, the country was one of the poorest in the world. However, the early 1990s marked large-scale trade liberalisation followed by high economic growth in the 2000s, mitigating the poverty situation in the country to a large extent—poverty declined to 14.3 percent in 2016 from 43.5 percent in 1991 (based on the International poverty line of US$ 1.90 per day using the 2011 Purchasing Power Parity exchange rate). Despite this, economic inequality has been on the rise in Bangladesh since the 1980s, and as of 2021, only 1 percent of the population holds 16.3 percent of the country’s national income. The country had graduated from a low-income country to a lower middle-income country in 2015 and is on track to make it to the list of least developed countries by 2026, enroute to its vision of becoming a developed country by 2041.
Bangladesh economy: Strong points and red flags | ORF (orfonline.org)
