Scaling up note: Bangladesh

Bangladesh has recently been classified as a lower-middle-income country and aims to reach upper-middle-income country status by 2021. To achieve this, the Government of Bangladesh will need to overcome considerable challenges in agricultural development and rural economic growth. The country’s annual GDP growth averaged about 6 per cent between 2000 and 2013, and was accompanied by a decline in the national poverty rate from 48.9 per cent to 31.5 per cent over the first decade of the century, effectively lifting some 16 million people out of poverty.