Local think-tank Unnayan Onneshan has said that country’s industrial development is slower than its potential because of many infrastructural bottleneck and policy failure.
In the September issue of its monthly economic update, the UO on Saturday said that poor infrastructure, myopic adoption of macroeconomic policies, lack of innovation and technological advancement and lack of export diversification were causing the sluggishness in industrial development.
It also said current uncertainties in the country’s politics might depress the investment situation causing the rate of growth in the sector to decline further.
Noting the current bottlenecks in electricity, gas and water supply sector, the think-tack said that the industrial sector had been growing at a declining rate and the rate of growth stood at 1.70 per cent in the financial year 2013-14 which was 8.99 per cent in the FY13, 10.58 per cent in the FY12 and 13.56 per cent in the FY11.
It also said that country’s large dependency on manpower for agriculture was also causing low labour absorption in the industrial sector.
Referring to decreased disbursement of industrial term loan, the UO shows that the disbursement of industrial term loan stood at Tk 9283.5 crore in the January-March quarter of the FY14, which is the lowest amount during the last five quarters.
The research organisation said that the total SME loan decreased by Tk 1,301.4 crore between the period of December 2013 and March 2014 and the rate of growth in SME loan has decreased from 6.71 per cent in
December 2013 to negative 1.12 per cent in March 2014.
It also said the Quantum Index of Production, which is used for measuring the production performance of the manufacturing industries, showed that for medium- to large-scale industries the QIP was 228.43 in the FY01 which lowered to 205.45 in the FY14.
Observing the recent decline in the rate of growth in mining and quarrying, the think-tank finds that the sector has grown by 5.22 per cent in the FY14, whereas the rate of growth in the sector was calculated at 9.35 per cent, 6.93 per cent and 3.62 per cent in the FY13, FY12 and the FY11 respectively.
-With New Age input
