DHAKA, Sept 17, 2024 (BSS) – Country’s eminent economist Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya, also the head of the committee on drafting a white paper on the state of economy, today said they would investigate how the calculations on key macroeconomic indicators like GDP, gross national income (GNI) and inflation were done in the past.

“In the broad line, we’ve identified the estimations that had been done were based on very weak physical foundation,” he said while briefing reporters at the Nazia Salma Conference Room of the Planning Commission in the capital’s Sher-e-Bangla Nagar area today.

He mentioned that on many occasions the officials who had prepared the estimations often felt helpless under pressure from the previous government.

“They were compelled to give those estimations, they told us so,” he added.

The briefing was made after the committee sat with the government officials from 24 organisations who deal with statistics and data related to the economy.

Debapriya, a distinguished fellow at Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) and convenor of the Citizen's Platform for SDGs, Bangladesh, said that they would look into how national income and inflation rate were estimated in the past.

“We’ll take these two as sample items and try to delve more deeply,” he said.

The eminent economist also mentioned that the committee would look into the matter of magnitude of the problem and its characteristics.

“We’re finding out ground zero, from ground zero it would be possible to build the building, we’re trying to understand whether it would be possible to construct the building,” he said.