Middle class people are facing greater hardship

THE government is facing high challenge to maintain the level of domestic demand during the extended shutdown period to tackle the spread of coronavirus. The shutdown has made the country’s 6.1 crore labour force almost jobless and forced thousands of small and medium enterprises to stay out of production. It also resulted in halving the country’s GDP growth, rattled the demand and supply chains and created huge unemployment. Banning all modes of transports across the country also rendered thousands of workers unemployed. The Economist has asked the government to suspend the implementation of less important projects and use the funds to help the people to increase their purchasing power. London-based Economist Intelligence Unit has already warned that Bangladesh’s gross domestic product growth would slow down to 3.5 per cent in the current fiscal due to the coronavirus impact.
Earlier, the government made projection in June 2019 that country to achieve 8.2 per cent growth in fiscal 2019-20. The closure of factories and businesses resulted in a supply-side shock and the subsequent layoffs will exacerbate the demand shock. On the other hand, the Asian Development Bank has also projected that Bangladesh’s economy might lose 1.10 per cent of its GDP, or $3.02 billion, in addition to 8.95 lakh job losses due to the same reason. The government should involve all irrespective of opinions to face the current crisis. The adverse impacts of the coronavirus have hit when almost major economic indicators — export, import and revenue income — excepting inflow of remittance were in a negative trend. As key sources of remittance in the Middle East have been also hit by the pandemic, the country received 11.83 per cent less remittance to $1.29 billion in March 2020 from $1.46 billion in March 2019. Falling remittance is a big blow for us when country is also facing capital flights. The poor people will be the worst sufferers and the middle to lower-middle class people may become poor by losing the jobs and other income-generating opportunities. The financial crisis is as real as the calamity of coronavirus inasmuch as the virus is killing people as well as ruining the economy of the country.
This pandemic is not only a deadly health hazard but also the contagion has created grave financial hazard for the economy. In our case the economy was on its tittering end before the onslaught of coronavirus. The worry is the government is neither of public trust nor it has the competence other than keeping themselves busy for glorifying the leadership to suppress the failure of the government.