Bangladesh may achieve the status of a middle-income country by 2021, said the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), a civil society think tank, on Wednesday. “Bangladesh has improved in two indicators of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) — per capita income and economic. But its score of human assets index is 54.4. It must be increased upto 66 to get out from the LDC group,” CPD research director Dr Fahmida Khatun told a press briefing while releasing the Least Developed Countries Report 2013. The report says the LDCs face a stark demographic challenge as their collective population is projected to be double to 1.7 billion by 2050. During the rest of current decade, these poor countries would have to create around 95 million jobs to absorb new entrants to the labour market, and another 160 million in the 2020s. The report cautions that while the LDCs enjoyed relatively high gross domestic products (GDP) growth rate from 2002 to 2008, which economic progress did not translate into correspondently increasing levels of employment. The report noted that demographic trends in the LDCs are such that millions of new jobs will have to be created every year over coming decades. For example, in Niger there were 224,000 new entrants into the labour market in 2005 – a number that is expected to increase fivefold, to 1.4 million, by 2050. In Bangladesh, there were 2.9 million new entrants in 2005. This figure will peak at 3.1 million by 2020, and decline thereafter. A significant share of the 30 percent increment in total labour force between 2010 and 2020 will occur in Ethiopia (12 percent), Bangladesh (11 percent) and Tanzania (9 percent), the report says. Dr Fahmida Khatun said although the GDP has been increased in the LDCs, employment opportunity has not created in these countries keeping pace with the growth for which poverty could not be cut significantly. “Such growth has not generated enough quality jobs, especially for the young generation. The LDCs employment growth lagged behind their rapid GDP expansion during the 2000s,” she said. – UNB
