More marbled floors, ACs and refrigerators spruce up Bangladeshi households
With a consistent rise in the GDP, Bangladeshi households now own more consumer assets than before
More Bangladeshi households now own consumer assets that are considered luxurious such as refrigerators, ovens, washing machines and air conditioners.
A total of 53.4% households, a sharp rise from 49.81% in 2022, now have refrigerators, ovens and washing machines, according to the Bangladesh Sample Vital Statistics 2023 published by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) on Sunday.
The number of air conditioners owned by Bangladeshi households has also witnessed around a one-third increase in a year, from 1.74% in 2022 to 2.28% in 2023.
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The rise in households owning more consumer assets can be linked to Bangladesh's rising GDP per capita, which, according to World Bank data, stood at $2,688.3 in 2022, a rise from $2,457.9 in 2021 and $2,233.3 in 2020.
The data from the BBS also indicates that more households now have access to electricity. It shows 0.56% of households in the country are now without electricity, which was 0.75% in 2022.
Other than electrical appliances, more Bangladeshi households now have sofas and motorcycles.
Usage of expensive construction materials on the rise
The BBS report also revealed a move towards comparatively expensive construction materials.
It shows 43.37% of households now use expensive materials like cement and concrete. It was 42.21% in 2022 and 41.42% in 2021.
The use of wood, bamboo, mud and sand have fallen in the same period.
Households also use more tiles, mosaic, marble, granite or furnished wood to construct floors. The percentage stands at 6% in 2023, which was 5.35% in 2022 and 4.34% in 2021.
Construction of walls and roofs also follows a similar trend, with more households using ceramic tiles or furnished wood compared to last year and fewer households using mud, soil, wood or bamboo.
Even the use of tin in roofs reduced to 78.01% in 2023 from 78.83% the previous year.
Sanitation gets better
According to the BBS report, households have better access to sanitation now, with 93.53% of the households having improved toilet facilities in 2023 from 92.51% in 2022.
It also says only 25.9% of households now share the toilet with another household, a drop from 26.6% in 2022.
The 2023 BBS report says 65.2% of the households have both soap and water, a rise of 63.2% from 2022, and 17.4% have neither soap nor water, which was 19.2% in 2022.
