Dhaka, June 18:

The per capita income in Bangladesh has shot up to $599 this fiscal year (July 1, 2007-June 30, 2008) from $523 last year, mainly due to remittances from its citizens working abroad.

The latest economic indicators of the impoverished South Asian nation show a fall in growth by one to three percentage points in agriculture, manufacturing, construction and service sectors. Part of this is due to natural calamities.

However, the bright side in the national accounts data of Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) is that the pace of increase in per capita income has been rapid in the last five years. It was $440 in 2003-04, $463 in 2004-05 and $476 in 2005-06.

Bangladesh hopes to touch $750 to emerge from its present least developed country (LDC) status to a middle-income economy. “Per capita income marked a rise by nearly 14 per cent due to high growth of remittance,” executive director of the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) Mustafizur Rahman said today.

“This is the same reason why our per capita income marked a rise of 12 per cent in the previous fiscal year,” he was quoted as saying in The Daily Star.

BBS data shows that growth in agriculture and forestry was 3.47 per cent in 2007-08, down from 4.69 per cent the year before. The fall in growth occurred due to cyclone Sidr and two consecutive floods. Animal farming growth marked a decline by 3.08 percentage points to 2.41 per cent in 2007-08 from the previous year’s 5.49 per cent. According to BBS data, the manufacturing sector marked a growth of 7.42 per cent — which is down by 2.3 percentage points from that of the previous fiscal year’s 9.72 per cent.