On Monday the central bank forecast in its first Monetary Policy Review a 6.3 to 6.8 percent GDP (gross domestic product) growth in the current fiscal.

When reporters asked him about the GDP growth at his secretariat office, Saifur claimed that the growth in the current fiscal year would exceed 7 percent mainly due to acceleration in employment generation.

"When one goes outside Dhaka, he or she can realise that plenty of development work is going on. When I go to Sylhet by road I have to pass through three other districts and I see factories and brick kilns are springing up on both the sides of the road and hundreds of people are working there. So, the real GDP growth will be more than that of BB forecast," he explained.

Terming the baseline of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics backdated, the minister said, "If the data were updated, our growth rate would look much healthier." Criticising the economists, he said they are always sitting in Dhaka and do not bother to see what is happening outside the city. "Kindly go outside Dhaka and you will get the real picture of the huge development works going on there," he said.

Regarding the central bank's suggestion of continuing with a tight monetary policy, he said its judgement is not correct. It (BB) makes such forecast taking various statistics into account, but it does not examine the money supply and its relation with the GDP, he pointed out.

The estimate the central bank has shown that a monetary growth of 1 percent will mean half percent rise in inflation is not correct, Saifur said. "A contractionary policy will shrink our very economy and the growth will be hampered," he feared.