Bangladesh, Dec. 20 -- On the face of it, the 1.3 percentage point drop of poverty from 21.8 per cent in the financial year (FY) 2017-18 to 20.5 per cent in 2018-19 may be considered an icing on the cake. This is so because the country has already improved its human development index (HDI) ranking by one slot and its gross domestic product (GDP) growth has broken the eight per cent barrier at 8.15 per cent for the first time. The GDP growth rate is incidentally the fastest in the Asia-Pacific region. The overall poverty reduction has duly been complemented by decrease in extreme poverty rate from 11.3 in the FY 2018 to 10.5 per cent in the FY 2019. If the annual poverty reduction takes place at this rate, roughly another 10 years will be re...