A nation without vision is a nation gone astray.

Such is not the case for Bangladesh

whoseindependence in 1971 was the culmination of a peoples struggle, as much for
political freedomas it was for their economic emancipation. In keeping with those
aspirations, the GovernmentsVision 2021 is an articulation of where this nation
needs to be in 2021 the year which marks the 50th anniversary of Bangladeshs
independence.
The 7th Five Year Plan aims to create 13.2 million jobs and raise GDP growth to 8
percent in the next five years.
Planning Commission officials said the document would be placed for clearance by
the National Economic Council (NEC) in a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Sheikh
Hasina at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar on Tuesday.
The 7th Five Year Plan spans the period 2015-16 to 2019-20. The 6th Plan ended in
June.Apart creating jobs and lifting the growth rate, the new plan has set several
highly ambitious goals such as the retention of microeconomic stability, financial
sector reforms, cutting inflation and establishing good governance.A panel of
economists, led by Professor Wahiduddin Mahmud, took a year to prepare the plan
by collecting data on sectors and sub-sectors from 30 research papers and 53
ministries and departments.Economists, sociologists, university teachers, former
government officials, and development organisations were consulted. The Planning
Commissions General Economics Division coordinated the work.A review of the
draft says the government intends to transform the economy from a rural-based
agrarian economy into one of more modern and urban-based manufacturing and
services. The new economy will be capable of creating a large number of jobs,
control inflation, and increase national savings in order to raise the GDP growth to 8
percent.A total of Tk 31.903 trillion is needed to implement the plan.
The panel expects Tk 28.451 trillion from domestic sources and Tk 3.052 trillion
from foreign sources to execute the plan.Tk 7.252 trillion will come in public sector
investment and Tk 24.651 trillion private sector investment.The power generation
capacity will increase to 23,000 megawatts due to a big investment in the next five
years.The export earnings will rise from $30.7 billion to $54.1 billion, according to
the draft. Import will also rise from $40.7 billion to $72.8 billion. It also says 20
percent of the total population will get higher education by 2020.The country will
have 856 kilometres of new rail roads. Poverty rate will drop to 18.6 percent and
the rate of ultra-poor to 8.9 percent.The World Banks Dhaka office's Lead
Economist Zahid Hussain thinks the targets are highly ambitious but not impossible
to achieve.It will be tough to achieve the targets of 8 percent GDP growth,
investments, exports, imports and those related to microeconomics, he said. But
it will be possible to reach these goals if the organisational capabilities of the
government-related organisations are increased and irregularities and corruption

are prevented, he added.The new plan has targeted 7 percent GDP growth in the
current fiscal year. The target is 7.2 percent for the next fiscal year, 7.4 percent for
2017-18 fiscal year, 7.6 percent for 2018-19 and 8 percent for 2019-20.It
emphasises six issues. They include developing vocational knowledge-based human
resource and removing infrastructural limitations in power, energy and
communication sectors.The others are to fix development strategy for agrarian, and
small and medium industries; enact specific strategy to export from ICT, health and
education sectors; bring dynamism in public-private investment, and diversify
products to boost export.