Bangladesh Bank governor Atiur Rahman has said Asian Clearing Union needs to deepen further the regional trade and economic integration for inclusive and environmentally sustainable growth. He termed the ACU member countries as a significant collective global growth hub. ‘We, ACU member countries, are already collectively a significant global growth hub, we can heighten this significance much further by deepening regional trade and economic integration in pursuit of inclusive and environmentally sustainable growth,’ said the governor while speaking at the ACU board of directors meeting at Kish Island in Iran on Friday.
He hoped that the ACU continues to retain relevance as a useful regional cooperation platform, with its technical committees active in reviewing and bringing up revision suggestions on ACU rules and procedures to enhance transaction efficiency and to sort out settlement bottlenecks or differences of opinions as they arise from time to time.
About the Bangladesh economy, Atiur said the economy was maintaining a stable growth impetus as investment and import growth had picked up momentum from the beginning of 2014, boding well for economic growth acceleration going forward.
‘Besides, the solid gains in macroeconomic stability, Bangladesh is progressing well also in social development indicators . . . quite a few of the main poverty reduction and human development MDGs have been attained well ahead of time line, while remaining well on course for attaining the others,’ he said.
He said Bangladesh’s GNI per capita has crossed the lower middle income country group threshold by close of FY13.
The governor said Bangladesh economy in 2013 maintained stable growth momentum despite facing some spells of unusually disruptive blockades and
hartals (strikes) in political unrests in the run up to national elections, besides other lingering uncongenialities like tepid recovery in global growth and infrastructural inadequacies impeding investment growth.
‘The economy came through all these odds with remarkable resilience, holding on to six-plus per cent real GDP growth trend with inflation around seven and a half per cent, fiscal deficit under four per cent of GDP, narrowing trade deficit, healthy balance of payments current account surplus and foreign exchange reserves cover around six months’ import requirement,’ he added.
‘Bangladesh’s steady and stable socioeconomic progress owes much to the government’s commitment to inclusive, sustainable socioeconomic growth; proactively supported by Bangladesh Bank’s initiatives of ingraining a socially responsible financing ethos in the country’s financial sector,’ the central bank governor said.
He said Bangladesh’s increasing external openness was reflected, as elsewhere, also in the 2013 data on ACU transaction settlements. Her trade settlements with other ACU member trade partners increased by 8.77 per cent in 2013 even as total ACU intraregional trade settlements declined by 7.53 per cent that year, he said.
Atiur said Bangladesh’s imports from other ACU members increased to $4,920 million in 2013 from $4,450 million of 2012 while exports to other ACU members declined to $113 million in 2013 from US$ 176 million of 2012. But Bangladesh’s exports to the rest of the world sustained double digit growth rate in 2013, and we would love to see rising trend in our exports to the ACU region, the governor added.
To this end, Bangladesh would welcome investors from regional partners in establishing cost efficient manufacturing bases in Bangladesh producing for local regional and global markets, he said, adding that it is heartening to see the beginnings of easing of US sanctions on engagements with Islamic Republic of Iran, a big impediment holding back flourishing of ACU intraregional trade and investments.
The governor expressed his optimism about fully exploiting ACU’s unrealised potential in deepening trade and investment integration in our region.
-With New Age input
