In the first quarter (July-September) of fiscal 2024-25, the gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate slowed to 1.81 percent, the lowest in almost four years.
Earlier, the GDP growth rate fell to 0.93 percent in the October-December period of the 2020-21 financial year.
Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) released the GDP data for the first three months of the current financial year on Monday (January 6).
Those concerned say that production in the industry was disrupted due to the student uprising in July-August and the subsequent situation. As a result, there has been a major impact on the GDP growth in the first quarter of the current financial year.
According to the provisional estimate of GDP for the current financial year, the size of GDP is Tk 12 lakh 665 thousand 74 crores. In the first quarter of the financial year 2023-24 was 19 lakh 703 thousand 10 crores. At that time the GDP growth rate was 6.04 percent.
GDP is published with the data of three sectors namely agriculture, industry and services. The lowest growth in the first quarter of FY2024-25 was in the agriculture sector, at 0.16 percent. It was 0.35 percent in the same period of the previous fiscal.
The industrial sector grew at 2.13 per cent in the first quarter of 2024-25, as against 8.22 per cent in the same quarter of the previous fiscal.
The services sector grew by 1.54 percent in the first quarter of the current financial year, which was 5.07 percent in the same period of the previous financial year.
Meanwhile, food price inflation in the country decreased to 12.92 percent last December. The previous month was November which was 13. 8 percent.
According to the latest BBS calculations, the country's overall inflation also eased to 10.89 percent in December due to lower food prices. Headline inflation was 11.38 percent in the previous month, November.
