Bangladesh for the first time in its history is going to have a national social protection strategy to eliminate inefficient and refocus programmes, aiming to strengthen the promotion of human capital and poverty alleviation efforts.
The government spends around 14 percent of its budgetary expenditure on social safety net programmes which is around 2.1 percent of the country’s overall GDP spreading over 99 programmes implemented by 22 ministries.
Many view that the social protection programmes are too many and there is a general complaint of wastage, leakage and duplication of programmes and in some cases miss-targeted. Many least developing and developing countries have such national social protection strategies.
The strategy paper is being prepared by the General Economics Division (GED) of the Planning Commission directed by a Cabinet decision to prepare this document a couple of months ago.
The main objectives of the Strategy Paper would be to eliminate inefficient and refocus programmes which strengthen the promotion of human capital, poverty eradication and meeting vulnerabilities while a lifecycle of human capital will be emphasized in the strategy paper, said GED member of the Planning Commission Prof M Shamsul Alam.
Talking to UNB, he said the Paper would also have some suggestions for innovative programmes that create employment opportunities, improve physical capital, and enhance graduation process out of poverty.
A core committee headed by the Cabinet Secretary M Musharraf Hossain Bhuiyan has been guiding and supervising the activities of the preparations of the National Social Protection Strategy Paper. The GED being the secretariat of the core committee is responsible for the formulation of the paper.
The GED is preparing the document with the financial assistance from the UNDP, DFID and Aus Aid while the Development Partners are also expected to come forward to help implement social protection activities once it is prepared and accepted by the government.
Bangladesh had been implementing social safety net programmes on ad-hoc basis for so long having no single institute, organisation or ministry to pioneer, supervise and monitor the social safety net programmes in Bangladesh.
In this connection, to see the implementation of social protection strategy, a secretarial team, headed by the Cabinet Secretary including GED member of the Planning Commission and other secretaries of the implementing Ministries recently visited South Africa to gain practical experience and organizational arrangement in implementing safety net programmes. This team also gained experience of social protection measures adopted by Nepal.
Prof M Shamsul Alam said to streamline the programmes and for reforming the organisational setup for better and efficient utilisation of the safety net funds, the government has instructed the GED to prepare a national social protection strategy paper.
He said that the first draft of the strategy paper has already been prepared and sent to the implementing ministries for comments.
The GED has also sent the draft to some renowned experts, economists and convened a meeting of the Local Consultative Group (LCG) of the development partners to discuss on this Strategy on December 2 at the NEC II in city’s Sher-e-Bangla Nagar area.
The meeting, which will be chaired jointly by the GED member and a representative of UNDP, would discuss and review the draft strategy paper to get the opinions and suggestions as some leading development partners like the World Bank, DFID, Aus Aid, support some of the important social safety net programmes in Bangladesh.
Countries, which have National Social Protection Strategy includes Cambodia, Nepal, South Africa, Rwanda and Lesotho.
According to the ‘Bangladesh Poverty Assessment: A Decade of Progress in Reducing Poverty, 2000-2010’ released in this June by the World Bank, Bangladesh experienced a uniform and steady decline in poverty rates between 2000 and 2010. Poverty declined by 1.8 percent annually between 2000 and 2005, and 1.7 percent annually in between 2005 to 2010.
There was a continuous decline in the number of poor people—from nearly 63 million in 2000, to 55 million in 2005, and then 47 million in 2010. Despite a growing population, the population of poor people declined by 26 percent in 10 years.
Source: UNBConnect
