Aslam, a student of class seven from Sabujbagh area in the capital is the hope for his poor family to end their struggles by getting a decent job after completing his education.

Four of the six of Aslam’s family members are aged above 40, in ten years who are likely to become financially dependent on him solely. This heavy burden of dependency on Aslam’s young shoulders actually depicts the future demographic dividend (ratio of working age population to dependent population) waiting for Bangladesh by 2050.

By 2050, a smaller number of working-age populations who are children today will need to support a much larger number of dependent populations.  As the percentage of children in the total population has been declining, the current higher ratio of more working age people compared to dependent population is only transitory and the window of current demographic dividend will start to close by 2040.

The children of today will be the savior and breadwinners of tomorrow so investing in them is actually an investment into the country's future economic aspirations.

But regrettably there is no way to measure how much the government is allocating for children in Bangladesh as for the third consecutive fiscal year the Child Budget report was not published.

The government on June 9 published the Budget for FY 2022-23 with cautious measures considering the current global economic crisis induced by Covid-19 pandemic and ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. Considering the current economic context a frugal budget deserves to be praised but it cannot be avoided that children should have been in focus more than ever in light of the same backdrop.

What is ‘Child Budget’?

The whole budget allocation of a Fiscal Year has shares for all so the necessity for a separate budget for children can be questioned. To answer that at first the notion of child budget should be cleared. It is not a separate budget for children rather a report on estimations of how much the related ministries are spending from the total public expenditure of a FY.

In FY 2015-16 former Finance Minister Abul Mal Abdul Muhit for the first time unveiled a child budget report on the budgetary allocations of five ministries linked to the development of children in Bangladesh. In neighboring India a similar kind of budget report on children was introduced way back in 2008.  

The last report on budget allocations for children was published in FY 2019-20. For the children who constituted two-fifths of the population, allocation in the total budget was only 14.1 percent in FY 2018-19 and 15.3 percent in FY 2019-20 budgets, according to the Ministry of Finance data.

While it was recommended to raise this share to 20 percent by 2020 in the budget speech of FY 2018-19, the government decided to not highlight the child focused allocations for the next three budgets after FY 2019-20.

According to a study conducted by Center for Policy Dialogue (CPD) partnered by UNICEF found that the budget of the selected 15 ministries/divisions with child-related development initiatives in FY 2021-22 has increased by 15.8 percent compared to the pre-Covid FY 2019-20 budgets. Yet the share of the child budget in total public expenditure had remained more or less the same, the study concludes.

Reason GoB should refocus on Child Budget

According to experts, investment in children generates the highest return when done in the early stage of life as it facilitates later growth in learning and other skill development and cuts the cost of future investments too.

CPD Distinguished Fellow, Professor Mustafizur Rahman said ensuring the well-being of children is a development issue and also a rights issue enshrined in our Constitution and embedded in various government policies.

According to him in last budget the allocations for children only about 1 per cent gone toward child protection while issues such as child labour, child marriage, learning losses and violence had acquired urgency during the pandemic.

In Bangladesh, 37 million children had their education disrupted by one of the world’s longest pandemic school closures of nearly 18 months, according to a report published by the World Bank on January 23.

The World Bank estimates that learning loss from Covid-19 could cost USD 17 trillion in life-time earning loss globally for the affected students. This amounts to 14 percent of the world's GDP today.

According to Covid-19 orphan hood tool developed by the Imperial College London, estimates of children who lost one or both parents during pandemic in Bangladesh up to June 10, 2022, topped 29,000.

Another budget not reflecting Childern's interest of severely malnourished children seeking treatment in hospitals increased by 72.0 per cent in 2021 compared to previous year, according to government data.

In this scenario, releasing the child budget along with the national budget can allow the concerned entities to monitor and assess the priority that the children deserve in terms of policies and allocations, said Prof Mustafizur Rahman.

 To ensure children like Aslam don’t get pushed toward an uncertain future of carrying a nation’s faltering economy ahead, ill-equipped or unequipped, the government refocusing on publishing child budget on a regular basis is rudimentary, he said.