Today, the interim administration made a significant choice by opting out of the existing Eighth Five-year Plan (8FYP).
“The five-year plan is being temporarily shelved. We’re not considering it at this time.
Following today’s ECNEC meeting, Dr. Wahiduddin Mahmud, the interim government’s advisor on the Ministries of Planning and Education, gave a briefing to reporters in the NEC conference room.
With Chief Adviser Dr. Muhammad Yunus in the chair, the interim government’s first ECNEC meeting took place at the Chief Adviser’s Office in Tejgaon.
According to Wahiduddin Mahmud, the government has recently established a committee to determine the new course of the economy in order to reconsider the nation’s economic strategy and investigate potential funding sources.
He said that the group will present a report in three months.
But according to Dr. Wahiduddin, the government won’t wait for the taskforce report.
“We’re getting ready to start some new projects so we won’t have to wait for that,” he stated.
In this regard, the Planning Adviser said that the nation has seen a great deal of infrastructure development over the years.
However, we’re far behind in terms of human resources, particularly in terms of education and training. Thus, we must act swiftly in this regard,” he stated.
“There are actually no similarities between this Plan and the national budget framed by the Ministry of Finance,” Dr. Wahiduddin responded when questioned about the suspension of the eighth five-year plan.
“The Plan has already been suspended; it is not necessary to suspend it again,” he stated.
Regarding the future of the Nineth Five-Year Plan, he stated that it is likely that the next political government will implement changes to the plan in order to position Bangladesh as a developed or upper middle-income country. He went on to say that no significant political decisions will be made in this regard.
The Five-Year Plan is a document that includes political governance guidelines and doctrine, which we shouldn’t ignore.
On December 29, 2020, the National Economic Council (NEC), led by the then-prime minister Sheikh Hasina, approved the Eighth Five-year Plan (8FYP), which runs from July 2020 to June 2025.
The plan is the first document to implement the “Perspective Plan of Bangladesh 2021-2041,” replacing the Seventh Five Year Plan (7FYP).
The 8FYP is a comprehensive policy and strategy document that covers a wide range of topics, from the macroeconomic framework and sector-specific goals to meet quantitative and qualitative targets to an assessment of the success accomplished in the 7FYP.
