Just imagine, a country in where 38.6% people live under poverty line. In 2008, per capita income was US $1389 where by the average was us$10,497. According to the International Monetary Fund, Bangladesh is 48th largest economy in the world in 2008. GDP is now US $0228.4 billion and half of this GDP belongs to service sector where two third of the population are working in agricultural sector. Rice is most important product upon which the GDP relies significantly. Peoples, who work overseas mostly in Middle East and East Asia, have significant role as Bangladesh earns remittances.
Besides garments is another source of foreign exchange earning. Rice and jute, two most important products upon which our economy depends a lot. Jute is called the golden fibre of Bangladesh . Now a days wheat production is increasing. But as population is increasing at a very high rate, Bangladesh is facing food problems thereby it has to pay a lot of currencies to import food products especially child food. 10% to 15% of population is facing serious nutritional problems and 45% people are at risk of food security. Again it is a country of rivers, so floods affect a lot in cultivation. Natural disaster also plays vital role in destroying our economy. After achieving independence in 1971, Bangladesh confronted the challenging task of developing and diversifying its economy, as the country had very limited natural resources and arable land with which to support its rapidly growing population. The task was complicated by years of political turbulence and military coups (in 1975, 1981, and 1982) that did little to attract international investors and by devastating natural disasters that regularly visited Bangladesh in the 1970s and 1980s. By the beginning of the 21st century, according to the World Bank, Bangladesh had become one of the poorest and least-developed economies in Asia .
During the 1970s and 1980s the government of In 1991, new civilian government considerably revised the economic policies of the previous government, introducing elements of free market economy, limiting state intervention, downsizing the government, launching privatization and attempting to attract foreign direct investments (FDIs) and technologies. The political stability of the 1990s and the new economic policies attracted international investors and greatly contributed to the economic growth of around 5 percent throughout the 1990s. However,
The structure of the Bangladeshi economy changed gradually over the last 3 decades. According to the World Bank, the contribution of agriculture to the country's GDP has been steadily declining from 55 percent in 1970 to 31.6 in 1999, although it still provides employment to large numbers of people.
For a long time
Economic growth and stability failed to bring economic prosperity to a large proportion of the population, especially in rural areas. Since the 1970s there has been an outflow of large numbers of the young and the most talented people from the country through various legal and illegal channels. Allegedly, organized criminal groups connected to drug trafficking control this outflow. Drugs are another important issue, as Bangladesh shares a border with Burma (Myanmar), which is a part of the world's largest opium producing region called the "Golden Triangle" (an area between Burma, Laos, and Thailand). The shadow economy is believed to be very large due to incomplete economic activities data collection, tax evasion, and a strong tradition of cash economy, although this shadow economy is not necessarily related to organized criminal activities. In 1996 a national account task force was formed to upgrade the outdated and inefficient system of national accounting, having among other goals to deal with the problem of calculating and capturing shadow economy activities.
There is no doubt that Bangladesh is developing at a good rate but its internal infrastructure to support the communication, transportation, water and power supply is quite limited. The service sectors are developing rapidly but industrial sectors are remaining undeveloped. There is eye catching development in coal mining. Lastly, we have large human resource, abundant water and agricultural land. But what will be happened while we would use all of these resources??