Prof. Abul Barkat made me laugh when he gave the number: currently 83.0% of population are poor,as opposed to the government's claim of 32.0%.
Here is the link where he said so.
Well, later, I thought, may be he is right, if not wholly on the number he gave, but the fact. The fact is: poverty has not been declining during the last couple of years as the government claimed.
What made you think that?
ReplyDeleteVery simple: Three factors determine the poverty path: income level, inflation and the direction of the relative share of income. Income level (GDP growth data) has been overly manipulated to the high; inflation (price data) has been manipulated to the low (if you may collect the BBS inflation data, you will be amazed to see the manipulation); and finally growth has not been pro-poor because of the price-income nexus (if you have the data on consumption expenditure from the National Income Accounting, you can see that share of total consumption expenditure on food has been actually rising over the years and as the poor spend mostly on the food item, the real income has been declining).
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