Bangladesh will aim for economic growth of at least six percent in the year through June 2005 as it seeks to reduce poverty, Finance Minister M. Saifur Rahman said on Monday, ahead of the annual budget due this week.
Agricultural subsidies would jump and the focus would remain on helping Bangladesh's poor, Saifur said.
But analysts said the projected growth was still not enough to make a big dent in poverty, which afflicts half the country's 130 million people.
Bangladesh was "well on course" to achieving a targeted 5.5 percent growth of gross domestic product (GDP) in the 2003-04 fiscal year ending on June 30, Saifur told Reuters in an interview ahead of the budget, expected on Thursday.
"But we will set a GDP growth target of between six and seven percent for the new year as the current growth rate is not enough to fight poverty."
Finance ministry officials said Saifur might propose a total outlay of 600 billion taka ($9.9 billion) in the 2004-05 budget, up more than 15 percent from the 2003-04 year.
Saifur said agricultural subsidies could be trebled to 9.0 billion taka ($148.9 million) from the present 3.0 billion taka.
"Since agriculture is the mainstay of Bangladesh's economy, contributing nearly 35 percent in the GDP, we must give special attention to increasing agricultural output," the minister said.
"This sector needs efficient irrigation management, better seeds and more fertilisers to yield more."
Other priorities were energy, road transport, education, rural development, health and population control, Saifur said.
Economic analysts said Bangladesh needed GDP growth of eight percent or more a year to meet the government's target of halving poverty by the year 2015.
They said attaining higher economic growth could be possible if there was political peace and good governance in the South Asian country, where the opposition has been running a campaign of street protests and strikes to try to force the government from office.
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