Sheikh Hasina

PID

The harvest of 12 years of continuous hard work has reached the developing world: PM Sheikh Hasina

The Prime Minister said, "Today's achievement, the transition from a least developed country to a developing country, is the result of our relentless planning, hard work and efforts over the past 12 years. The people of the country have done all this. We have created opportunities with only policy support from the government."

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina made the remarks in a written address at a press conference on Saturday afternoon on the occasion of the UN's recommendation on transition from a least developed country. He attended the press conference virtually via video conference from Ganobhaban. Journalists were virtually connected to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO).

Sheikh Rehana, the youngest daughter of the Father of the Nation and younger sister of the Prime Minister, and Obaidul Quader, Minister for Road Transport and Bridges and General Secretary of the Awami League, were present at the Ganobhaban.

The Prime Minister said the UN reviews the transition from Least Developed Countries (LDCs) on the basis of per capita income, human resources and economic and environmental fragility. In the first triennial review meeting held in 2016, Bangladesh, for the first time, officially met the three criteria of transition from a least developed country very well. In its continuation, in the triennial review meeting held this year, Bangladesh again qualified to pass from the least developed country by fulfilling all the criteria very successfully.

She said that according to the UN review, the per capita income standard in 2019 was set at 1,222 US dollars. In that year, the per capita income of Bangladesh was 1 thousand 726 dollars. And now our per capita income is 2 thousand 84 dollars. That is about 1.6 times the standard. Bangladesh's achievement is 85.4 against the standard 8 set in the human resource index. The criteria for passing the Economic and Environmental Fragility Index were set at 32 or less. But at that time Bangladesh's position was 27.

Sheikh Hasina said Bangladesh a decade ago and today's Bangladesh is not one. Today's Bangladesh is a changed Bangladesh. He highlighted some of the magnets of the country's socio-economic development at the time, saying that the size of GDP in 2008-09 was only 103.5 billion US dollars. In 2019-20, it has increased to 330.2 billion US dollars.

The Prime Minister said the foreign exchange reserves have increased from 7.4 billion US dollars in 2008-09 to 44.03 billion dollars now. In 2019, the poverty rate has come down to 20.5 percent and the extreme poverty rate to 10.5 percent.