The Asian Development Bank has predicted that Bangladesh's GDP or gross domestic product growth is to grow 6.4 percent in the current 2014-15 fiscal year ending next month.

"Growth forecasts for Pakistan and Bangladesh are also edged up in 2015, but efforts to improve the climate for private investment are key in both cases," the Manila-based bank said in its Asian Development Outlook Update (ADOU) 2014, which was released here Thursday.

It said the sub-regional growth forecast for 2014 is edged up slightly to 5.4 percent in 2014.

The improvement reflects strengthening in Bangladesh on export growth and in Pakistan on higher remittances. Growth in India in 2014 is expected to revive to 5.5 percent as previously forecast, after 2 disappointing years below 5 percent, it added.

According to ADOU, growth in South Asia will pick up to 6.1 percent in 2015, 0.3 percentage points faster than previously forecast.

India's 2015 growth projection is raised to 6.3 percent on the expectation that the newly elected government will begin to implement long-delayed reforms to deal with investment bottlenecks, fiscal imbalances, and other structural deficiencies, it said.

Forecasts for sub-regional inflation are trimmed since April by about a third of a percentage point to 6.1 percent in 2014 and 5.9 percent in 2015, it said and added upward adjustments to South Asia's growth projections will be counterbalanced by likely slowdowns in Central Asia and Southeast Asia.

The Bangladeshi government in June this year unveiled a record 2.51 trillion-taka (about 32.42 billion U.S. dollars) proposed national budget, targeting an economic growth of 7.3 percent for the next 2014-15 fiscal year starting in July.

"The target of growth for the next fiscal year would be 7.3 percent, and in 2021 it would be 10 percent," the country's Finance Minister AMA Muhith said in his budget speech in June. Endi

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