1   INTRODUCTION

 The Fifth Trade Policy Review of Bangladesh covering the period between 2012 and 2018 witnessed high economic growth over 6% tackling various national and international challenges. The GDP growth rate was 6.52% in FY 2011-12 which increased to 7.86% in FY 2017-18. The prudent macroeconomic management and trade policies with a view to achieving 'Vision 2021' for becoming a middle-income country and 'Vision 2041' to be a developed country led the country to continue with stable growth along with remarkable socio-economic development.

 During 2015-2018, the overall economic indices have shown remarkable improvement, particularly in infrastructure, energy and power sector, information and communication technologies (ICT) and investments in the private and the public sectors. The incidence and depth of poverty in Bangladesh decreases significantly due to various government initiatives, especially adopting life-cycle approach to social safety net programmes. As a result, the headcount poverty rate declined from 31.5% in 2010-11 to 21.8% in 2017-18 while the hardcore poverty reduced from 24% in 2010-11 to 11.3% in 2017-2018. Inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient however, has remained mostly unchanged between 0.321 in 2010 and 0.324 in 2016.

Keeping pace with the increased development activities of the Government, the annual budget size is increasing gradually.  Total  budget  outlay  for  FY 2018-19  increased  by  25.05%  to  BDT 4645.73 billion compared to the revised budget of the previous fiscal year. In line with this, the Government has been implementing various tax reforms including legal and administrative reforms. The revenue mobilization increased by 18.74% in 2017-18 compared to the outturn of the previous fiscal year. The allocations and number of development projects implemented also increased during this period under Annual Development Programme (ADP).

The monetary policy of the country has been formulated along with the fiscal measures to support the higher economic growth, maintaining macroeconomic stability and keeping inflation at tolerable rate. As a result of prudent monetary and fiscal policies, inflation came down to 5.8% in FY 2017-18 from 7.4% in FY 2013-14, foreign exchange reserve stood at USD 32.92 billion at the end of June, 2018 and exports-imports also showed upward trend.

In the last seven years starting from 2012, Bangladesh has made an unstoppable journey in GDP growth, investment, per capita GNI, power generation, food grain production and stabilizing inflation rate. During the period under review, Bangladesh achieved an average GDP growth rate of 6.7% while the developing economies' average GDP growth rate was 5.1%, public investment rose to 8% from 5.76%, per capita income also increased from USD 955 to USD 1,751 electricity generation increased from 8,716 megawatts to 18,353 megawatts and food grain production increased from 38.8 million MT to 40.7 million between 2011-12 to 2017-18 despite massive urbanization, population increase, reduction of cultivable land and other challenges (Table 1).

Table 1 Important Macro Economic Indicators (at constant prices), Power Generation and Food Grain Production