Bangladesh can become middle income country by 2016, says WB

url (http://www.thedailystar.net/2007/07/27/d7072701129.htm)

I first came across this Daily Star news today and realized that the title was very appealing to me since I knew most undeveloped countries as well as the least undeveloped country like Bangladesh have to meet the MDGs goals by 2015 according to the UN and now the World Bank claimed that Bangladesh can become a middle income country by 2016. That's another challenging goal for such an undeveloped country and yet they still have to achieve the MDGs goals as well. The World Bank believed that "Bangladesh can develop into a middle-income country by 2016 if liberalise trade further, increase energy prices, privatise selected state-owned enterprises, and maintain its past record of economy stability." The previous article I have also read also mentioned the same guy, a finance adviser Azizul Islam who talked about how Bangladesh needs to be a secular and peaceful country with a stable and capable government. Islam warned about the greater unemployment and finanicial/food insecurity and the government is trying to plan out the ideas to sustain growth of the country. The WB Country Director Xian-Zhu assumed that Bangladesh can be a middle-income country by 2016 if the GDP growth goes up to a sustained rate of 7.5 per cent, and in order to do that, with Bangladesh's capable rapid growth, it converts to labor-intensive manufacturing from agriculture, introduces major urban centres with growth potential, and integration with international markets. But the bad news is that the political implications from rising inflation may hurt fixed income groups by losing a lot of money and if the policy of crop-diversification towards high-yield crops is still used, the food insecurity in Bangladesh will most likely to increase. GDP is one of the explained broad definition of development as discussed in class; it is the first and most common one, which is identified by the gross domestic product or the gross national product per capita. GDP is all the products/all the production that's done in one country for a year.

Another former finance adviser Akbar Ali Khan warned that the country of Bangladesh needs policies towards increasing employments and have their traditional issues to be looked after. After reading the goals, back-ups, and implemented recommendations for the undeveloped country of Bangladesh, I always ponder if this country can both achieve MDG goals and become a middle-income country at the same time regardless of the deadline? It appears that there is an issue of creating jobs in the country as well as the food insecurity. I am hoping that, with the help and advices of these finance advisers, that they would work to meet that deadline. If that is true that Bangladesh is capable of rapid growth, then it may be feasible it can increase its GDP, but I cannot envision that happening by exactly 2016, I mean there can be more political, environmental, equity, development, and social strifes in the later years which can disrupt the country's smooth progression to join the MICs. I just cannot envision its progression to middle-income country status by that deadline. World Bank cannot just claim the country's past growth/fall out history in the 1980s when its average growth falls to the 3% rate, and estimate that dream of becoming a middle-income country will be met in the another 5 decades. Do you think the World Bank's proposed middle-income strategy is a bit difficult to envision--have you ever thought about the effects to that country if that happens--such as threatening to weaken the social and environmental standards?