IMF pushes for releasing quarterly report on GDP

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has pressed Bangladesh for preparing and releasing quarterly reports on the gross domestic product (GDP).

The visiting IMF delegation made the call at a meeting with the officials of Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) on Tuesday (1 November).

Apart from that, the agency also wanted to know the reason behind the delay in publishing the recent inflation data.

Mission Chief Rahul Anand led the IMF team while National Accounting Wing Director Ziauddin along with some BBS officials participated in the meeting under the leadership of BBS Director General Matiar Rahman.

As per the IMF requirement, Matiar Rahman said, "The government is working to rebase the base year to calculate the GDP every three months, for which the IMF is providing technical assistance."

Explaining the existing GDP assessment process, the BBS Director General told The Business Standard that BBS calculates the yearly GDP in the last quarter of a fiscal year. 

"The final report is released a few months after the end of the given year," he explained.

"The IMF delegation came to the BBS office to know the progress of this work," he added.

He also noted that Tuesday's meeting of the bureau office had nothing to do with the ongoing discussion regarding the IMF's $4.5 billion loan support.

Matiar Rahman also noted that there are some problems in publishing the GDP data every quarter.

"Now, the production data is collected once a year from various institutions, but then the data has to be collected four times a year to release the GDP report quarterly," he said. 

For this reason, other organisations must also be prepared, he noted, adding, "We are preparing everyone for this. Almost all South Asian countries published their quarterly report on GDP. We also have to follow suit. However, it is not possible to say how much time it will take. We have conveyed all these matters to the IMF."

In response to a question, he said, the delegation wanted to know the reason for the delay in releasing the inflation data in August.

Matiar Rahman continued, "I said, we need permission from the state to release the information on inflation which arrived late in August. This is the main reason for the delay."

Although it is customary to prepare the inflation report at the end of each month and release it in the first week of the following month, the inflation data for August has not been released, even in September.

Planning Minister MA Mannan said that the consumer inflation increased extensively in August before the two-month data was released by the BBS in October, but it came down slightly in September.

Many people commented that the release has been delayed due to the big jump in inflation, exceeding 9.5%.

According to a source who participated in the meeting, the IMF also wanted to know the latest data on the country's poverty and employment rate.