World Bank
Urban plastic consumption triples in 15 years: World Bank
Sustainable management of plastic waste and controlling the increasing trend of pollution is very crucial to ensure green growth for Bangladesh, said the World Bank.
A new report of the World Bank said the country’s annual per capita plastic consumption in urban areas tripled to 9.0 kg in 2020 from 3.0 kg in 2005.
With rapid growth and urbanization, Bangladesh faced a sharp increase in both plastic use and pollution. The COVID-19 pandemic has escalated the problem of mismanaged plastic waste,” said Dandan Chen, World Bank Acting Country Director for Bangladesh.
Also read: Global deal on plastic pollution is urgent: Speakers
“Going forward, sustainable plastic management—from designing a product, to minimizing plastic use, to recycling—will be critical to ensure green growth for the country. We commend the government’s commitment to implement a National Action Plan to beat plastic pollution," she said.
The ‘Towards a Multisectoral Action Plan for Sustainable Plastic Management in Bangladesh’ report provides a blueprint for managing plastic pollution over the short term (2022–2023), medium-term (2024–2026), and long-term (2027–2030), which will require an integrated cross-sectoral approach.
Bangladesh’s National Action Plan for Sustainable Plastic Management sets a target of recycling 50 percent of plastics by 2025, phasing out targeted single-use plastic by 90 percent by 2026, and reducing plastic waste generation by 30 percent by 2030 from 2020/21 baseline.
The plan, which is aligned with the 8th Five-year plan, was based on needs collectively identified by the Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change, Department of Environment, private sector, and other stakeholders.
The Action Plan focuses on circular use of plastic based on a 3R strategy: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. A circular economy will help create new value chains, green skills, employment, and innovative products while addressing social and environmental challenges.
The country’s annual per capita plastic consumption in urban areas tripled to 9.0 kg in 2020 from 3.0 kg in 2005. Dhaka’s annual per capita consumption of plastic is 22.5 kg, significantly higher than the national average.
Also read: Government to implement an action plan for sustainable plastic management: Environment Minister
COVID 19 pandemic has worsened plastic pollution, especially from single-use plastic used in masks, gloves, and Personal Protective Equipment. A large part of the plastic waste is dumped in water bodies and rivers, the report said.
Bangladesh progressively took steps in curbing plastic pollution, with varied outcomes: in 2002, Bangladesh was the world’s first country to ban plastic shopping bags. However, after some time, plastic pollution increased again. The Jute Packaging Act 2010 for six essential items (paddy, rice, wheat, maize, fertilizer, sugar) promoted an alternative to plastic packaging.
In 2020, the High Court directed concerned authorities to ban Single-Use Plastic in coastal areas and all hotels and motels across the country.
“To implement the National Action Plan focusing on 3R strategy, commitment from all stakeholders, including citizens, the government, private sector, development partners, and citizens will be important,” said Eun Joo Allison Yi, World Bank Senior Environment Specialist, and co-author of the report.
To implement the action plan, the report identifies policy reforms, technologies, infrastructures, investment, and institutional capacity-building needs. The report was prepared in collaboration with the Department of Environment and PROBLUE, a multi-donor trust fund.
'WB committed to Bangladesh's resilient and inclusive recovery from Covid'
The World Bank is committed to helping Bangladesh remain on a sustainable growth path, amid the government's economic reforms to emerge stronger from the Covid-19 pandemic.
The assurance came from none other than the global leader's Vice President for South Asia, Hartwig Schafer, as he wrapped up his week-long visit to Bangladesh.
During his visit, Schafer met with the Finance Minister and commended the government’s measures to contain the pandemic, and its focus on an inclusive economic recovery.
He also noted the strong role the Prime Minister played at the recent COP26 meeting, the World Bank said in a statement.
“The resilience of Bangladesh’s people and the economy is striking. The Covid-19 pandemic hit the country hard, but the government’s proactive measures have largely contained the virus and the economy has started to turn around,” Schafer said.
He said that the World Bank is committed to helping Bangladesh remain on a sustainable growth path, which will require timely policy actions to build strong public institutions, a robust private sector and conducive business climate, and a skilled labour force, and at the same time focus on climate resilience.
During the visit, Schafer also met with Advisor to the Prime Minister Salman F Rahman, Governor of Bangladesh Bank Fazle Kabir, Chairman of the National Board of Revenue (NBR) Abu Hena Md Rahmatul Muneem, as well as senior government officials, representatives from the private sector, and development partners.
The World Bank Group is beginning the preparation of its new Country Partnership Framework (CPF) for Bangladesh, which will guide its support to the country from 2023-2027.
This entails a robust consultation process with a broad range of stakeholders in government, the private sector, and civil society, and with development partners, the statement said.
In his meetings with government and other stakeholders, Schafer discussed their perspectives on Bangladesh’s development priorities and how the World Bank can support these in a sustainable way.
“Bangladesh is an inspiring development success story,” said Schafer.
“As the country works to become an upper-middle-income country by 2031, the World Bank will be there every step of the way on a path to economic growth that is greener, more resilient, and more inclusive for the people of Bangladesh.”
Schafer also visited two World Bank-financed project sites.
In Bhairab, he met with micro-entrepreneurs who are using clean technologies in their shoe-making businesses.
They are among the 40,000 micro-enterprises who are gaining access to microfinance to grow their small businesses and boost their incomes, while adopting greener and cleaner production practices.
In Ashuganj, he visited a modern steel silo complex construction site. The World Bank is supporting with the construction of eight modern steel silo complexes in Bangladesh.
These silos can store 535,500 metric tonnes of rice and wheat for up to three years while retaining their nutritional quality.
Schafer also joined an event, jointly organised by the Ministry of Road Transport and Bridges, BRAC and the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), to promote road safety awareness and UN-standard helmets that are affordable and certified for motorised two-wheeler riders.
World Bank VP visits footwear cluster
World Bank Vice President for South Asia Region Hartwig Schafer on Wednesday visited the footwear microenterprises cluster at Bhairab in Kishoreganj.
Under the Sustainable Enterprise Project (SEP), co-financed by The World Bank, Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation (PKSF) is supporting the footwear-producing microenterprise cluster where around 200,000 pairs of footwear are manufactured a day.
Bhairab is home to more than 10,000 footwear microenterprises, employing over 120,000 people.
Read: Bangladesh's economy doing better to recover from Covid-19 shocks: WB Vice President
Schafer expressed satisfaction at the SEP’s role in sustainable expansion of the footwear-manufacturing microenterprises.
“It is great to see what can be done when you empower communities and when you start small,” he said.
During the visit, he was accompanied by Managing Director Dr Nomita Halder, World Bank Country Director Mercy Miyang Tembon, Additional Managing Director of PKSF Md Fazlul Kader, and other representatives from the government, The World Bank and project-implementing partner organization of PKSF, according to a press release.
They visited SEP supported footwear common service center to support the footwear-producing microenterprises in Bhairab.
They talked to the service providers and have had been explained the services there. Later, they also talked to some of the SEP-supported micro-entrepreneurs.
PKSF Managing Director Dr Nomita Halder said that in addition to inclusive financing, capacity building, technology transfer, value chain development and other technical services are being provided to help the low-income people to get out from the vicious cycle of low productivity.
“Additionally, in all its project area, PKSF ensures safe environment for the female workers like what is done in the SEP,” she said.
She also said that the PKSF made it flexible for the microentrepreneurs who suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read: WB delays decision to fund road safety project: Obaidul Quader
“Because we want to eradicate poverty not only by lending money but also by creating employment opportunity,” she said.
The PKSF MD said that Promoting decent workplace, the government want to ensure good business but also sustainable business.
“Money alone cannot solve problems. It requires commitment and partnership like we have between The World Bank and PKSF.”
Appreciating the effort and enthusiasm of the female micro-entrepreneurs World Bank country director Mercy Miyang Tembon said that she was very happy to meet the women who are not only working for themselves but also employing other women.
“That is why SEP is very important. PKSF is doing a wonderful job as they are doing it all over the country.”
Additional Managing Director of PKSF Fazlul Kader presented on the SEP’s interventions with particular focus on the footwear-producing cluster.
To assist the microenterprises of Bangladesh in enhancing their marketing and brand development capacity and adopting environmentally sustainable practices, PKSF is implementing the SEP, jointly financed by PKSF and The World Bank with support from the government of Bangladesh.
The total budget of this five-year project is USD 130 million, of which the World Bank and PKSF will finance USD 110 million and USD 20 million respectively.
To implement the project, the lead business clusters, based in the lead sub-sectors of the agribusiness and manufacturing sectors, are provided financial and technical support.
A total of 64 sub-projects have been undertaken from 30 different sub-sectors under the project.
People’s Oriented Program Implementation (POPI), a partner organization of PKSF, is implementing one of the sub-projects, titled ‘Establishing Environmental Practices in Hazardous Footwear Microenterprises in Bhairab.
Students may lose around $17 trillion in lifetime earnings for Covid learning loss: Report
Students now risks losing $17 trillion in lifetime earnings in present value, or about 14 percent of today’s global GDP, as a result of COVID-19 pandemic-related school closures, according to a new report published today by the World Bank, UNESCO, and UNICEF.
The new projection reveals that the impact is more severe than previously thought, and far exceeds the $10 trillion estimates released in 2020.
In addition, The State of the Global Education Crisis: A Path to Recovery report shows that in low- and middle-income countries, the share of children living in Learning Poverty – already 53 percent before the pandemic – could potentially reach 70 percent given the long school closures and the ineffectiveness of remote learning to ensure full learning continuity during school closures.
Read: Project launched to help children overcome COVID-19 learning loss
“The COVID-19 crisis brought education systems across the world to a halt,” said Jaime Saavedra, World Bank Global Director for Education. “Now, 21 months later, schools remain closed for millions of children, and others may never return to school. The loss of learning that many children are experiencing is morally unacceptable. And the potential increase of Learning Poverty might have a devastating impact on future productivity, earnings, and well-being for this generation of children and youth, their families, and the world’s economies.”
Simulations estimating that school closures resulted in significant learning losses are now being corroborated by real data.
For example, regional evidence from Brazil, Pakistan, rural India, South Africa, and Mexico, among others, show substantial losses in math and reading.
Analysis shows that in some countries, on average, learning losses are roughly proportional to the length of the closures.
However, there was great heterogeneity across countries and by subject, students’ socioeconomic status, gender, and grade level.
For example, results from two states in Mexico show significant learning losses in reading and in math for students aged 10-15. The estimated learning losses were greater in math than reading, and affected younger learners, students from low-income backgrounds, as well as girls disproportionately.
Barring a few exceptions, the general trends from emerging evidence around the world align with the findings from Mexico, suggesting that the crisis has exacerbated inequities in education
“The COVID-19 pandemic shut down schools across the world, disrupting education for 1.6 billion students at its peak, and exacerbated the gender divide. In some countries, we’re seeing greater learning losses among girls and an increase in their risk of facing child labor, gender-based violence, early marriage, and pregnancy. To stem the scars on this generation, we must reopen schools and keep them open, target outreach to return learners to school, and accelerate learning recovery," said UNICEF Director of Education Robert Jenkins.
Read:Hasina urges UNESCO to declare online and remote learning as public good
The report highlights that, to date, less than 3 percent of governments’ stimulus packages have been allocated to education. Much more funding will be needed for immediate learning recovery.
The report also notes that while nearly every country in the world offered remote learning opportunities for students, the quality and reach of such initiatives differed – in most cases, they offered, at best, a rather partial substitute for in-person instruction.
More than 200 million learners live in low- and lower middle-income countries that are unprepared to deploy remote learning during emergency school closures.
Bangladesh's economy doing better to recover from Covid-19 shocks: WB Vice President
The World Bank’s Vice President for South Asia Hartwig Schafer has praised Bangladesh's recent success in recovering the economy from the adverse impact of Covid-19.
He said Bangladesh's economy is doing better than many other countries and the economy has turned around by tackling cowardice.
At the World Bank-IMF annual meeting 2021, Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal requested to adopt a flagship project for Dhaka City aimed at facilitating communication as well as a more aesthetic city.
Read: WB delays decision to fund road safety project: Obaidul Quader
Responding to that he said good news regarding the proposal will be available soon as the World Bank sees it positively.
Kamal said that due to giving loans against the project as per the conventional rules, it is often seen that the projects are not ready and it takes a lot of time to prepare them slowing the pace. .
To overcome this slow pace, Kamal requested the World Bank to provide project loans in the form of budget support, then the government would be able to release funds for those projects which are ready on priority basis and the pace of projects would be accelerated.
A bilateral meeting between Kamal and Schaefer was held at a hotel in the capital on Sunday.
Senior Secretaries of the Internal Resources Department Abu Hena Md Rahmatul Muneem, Finance Division Abdur Raouf Talukder, Secretaries of Economic Relations Department Fatema Yasmin and Financial Institutions Department Sheikh Md. Salim Ullah, participated in the discussion as members of the Bangladesh delegation.
On the other hand, on behalf of the World Bank, Mercy Miyang Tembon, Country Director of the World Bank in Bangladesh; Zoubida Kherous Allaoua, Regional Director (South Asia) of the World Bank, Cecile Fruman, South Asia Regional Integration and Cooperation Officer participated in the meeting.
The finance minister narrated Bangldesh’s economic achievements in recent years.
"Our export earnings are growing at more than 24 per cent, foreign exchange reserves $45-46 billion; debt-to-GDP ratio is still below 40 per cent; inflation in Bangladesh is like all other countries in the world, has risen but is still below 6 per cent; The growth in revenue collection is about 17 per cent; Non-performing loans fell to 8.1 per cent; debt has increased by 9.5 per cent in the first quarter of the current financial year and interest rate on bank loans has come down to 7.3 percent,” Kamal said.
Read: WB lauds Bangladesh's economic growth despite downturn
He also urged the World Bank for quick release of $500 million to keep operative the labour market as well as social sector, as assistance program under the programmatic recovery and resilience development policy credit (DPC).
Schafer recommended that the project be more dynamic in each area of design, processing, approval and implementation.
To this end, he proposed to the Economic Relations Department, the Ministry / Department implementing the project and the World Bank to take initiative for timely implementation of the project.
He emphasized the need to expedite the implementation of the ongoing Recovery and Resilience DPC, Climate Change-related Policy Actions and the adoption and implementation of new projects in the field of Regional Integration and Cooperation.
IFC provides liquidity succour to Covid-hit RMG sector
To help Bangladesh’s export-oriented ready-made garment (RMG) industry offset the Covid-induced losses, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) has now stepped in.
To start with, the sister organisation of the World Bank has invested 22.7 million USD in Hamza Textiles Limited (HTL), a dyeing and finishing company owned by the Dulal Brothers Ltd (DBL) Group.
The investment marks IFC’s first Covid-19 support in the RMG sector and includes financing from the International Development Association’s Private Sector Window (IDA-PSW), set up to catalyse investment in low-income and fragile countries.
Read: Steps sought for re-skilling, upskilling of RMG workers to face 4IR challenges
According to the IFC, the financing will help the company build a new factory with advanced and resource-efficient technologies to respond to evolving demands of consumers and create more than 900 direct new jobs.
“The new factory will allow Hamza to work with new fabrics to meet increasing buyer requirements, widen its manufacturing base and highlight the effectiveness of advanced technologies to cut production costs and deliver climate benefits,” said MA Jabbar, DBL's Managing Director.
The expanded operation is also expected to contribute 8 million USD to Bangladesh's economy directly and indirectly through local supply chains by 2028, 15 million USD in expected economic activities generated by additional income of employees, and boost opportunities for micro, small, and medium enterprises along the supply chain.
HTL provides dyeing and finishing services for fabrics that are used in making RMG by its sister companies, owned by the DBL Group, which is one of Bangladesh’s largest integrated knitted apparel manufacturers and exporters.
IFC’s investment will help expand HTL’s finishing capacity by 80 tonnes per day to reach a total capacity of 103 tonnes per day at its new factory, which will also be a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified green building.
Read: UNGPs: Experts say work environment in RMG sector needs to be improved
Long-neglected CHT finally going to be on railway map
The government has taken a project to bring three districts of the Chattogram Hill Tracts (CHT) -- Rangamati, Khagrachhari and Bandarban -- under the railway network for making life in the remote hilly region easier.
Initially, officials said, Rangamati will be connected with the railway network and Bangladesh Railway has already started work on setting up a 42-km rail track in the district which is expected to end by 2026.
General Manager (Eastern Zone) of Bangladesh Railway Md Jahangir Hossain said Bangladesh Railway will construct the 42-km rail link from Raozan upazila to Rangunia via Kaptai involving Tk 8.926 crore.
Read: Dual gauge railway from Bogura to Sirajganj under LoC soon
He said the Economic Relations Division (ERD) has contacted the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jaica) seeking a loan amounting to Tk 7,141 crore for the much-needed project.
Recently, Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Railways Ministry and Chattogram-6 constituency MP ABM Fazle Karim Chowdhury said Rangamati will be brought under the country’s railway network.
“The government has taken the project to ease transportation of goods produced in Rangamati to Chattogram city and other parts of the country, and ensure train services for tourists,” he said while speaking at a programme at Kumira in Sitakunda upazila.
The government also has a plan to connect Khagrachchari and Bandarban districts with the country’s railway network, he said.
“The government has planned to establish 55 new railway stations across the country and 26 of these will be set up in the eastern region. Besides, train service will be launched from Nazirhat to Ramgarh Land port,” he added.
Railways Minister Md Nurul Islam Sujon at a programme in Dhaka recently said the government has taken a project titled “Janalihat-Cuet-Kaptai Dual gauge Rail Tracks” and a preliminary development project proforma/proposal (PDPP) has been prepared.
Bangladesh's burden of plastic waste
Plastic is choking Bangladesh's drains, canals, and rivers.
Around 1,700 tonnes of plastic waste is produced in the country every day and only half of it is recycled, according to the Department of Environment.
In Dhaka city alone, plastic waste has gone up more than 3.5 times from 178 tonnes per day in 2005 to 646 tonnes per day in 2020. Of that 646 tonnes, only 37 per cent is recycled, and mostly by the informal sector, according to the World Bank.
It is almost impossible to imagine a day without any use of plastic. Clogged drains, bags fluttering in the wind, masses of plastic piled in dumps, and road corners have become an everyday reality in Bangladesh.
Taliban replace ministry for women with ‘virtue’ authorities
Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers set up a ministry for the “propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice” in the building that once housed the Women’s Affairs Ministry, escorting out World Bank staffers on Saturday as part of the forced move.
It was the latest troubling sign that the Taliban are restricting women’s rights as they settle into government, just a month since they overran the capital of Kabul. During their previous rule of Afghanistan in the 1990s, the Taliban had denied girls and women the right to education and barred them from public life.
Separately, three explosions targeted Taliban vehicles in the eastern provincial capital of Jalalabad on Saturday, killing three people and wounding 20, witnesses said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Islamic State group’s militants, headquartered in the area, are enemies of the Taliban.
The Taliban are facing major economic and security problems as they attempt to govern, and a growing challenge by IS militants would further stretch their resources.
In Kabul, a new sign was up outside the women’s affairs ministry, announcing it was now the “Ministry for Preaching and Guidance and the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.”
Read: Fearful US residents in Afghanistan hiding out from Taliban
Staff of the World Bank’s $100 million Women’s Economic Empowerment and Rural Development Program, which was run out of the Women’s Affairs Ministry, were escorted off the grounds, said program member Sharif Akhtar, who was among those being removed.
Mabouba Suraj, who heads the Afghan Women’s Network, said she was astounded by the flurry of orders released by the Taliban-run government restricting women and girls.
On Friday, the Taliban-run education ministry asked boys from grades six to 12 back to school, starting on Saturday, along with their male teachers. There was no mention of girls in those grades returning to school. Previously, the Taliban’s minister of higher education minister, had said girls would be given equal access to education, albeit in gender-segregated settings.
“It is becoming really, really troublesome. ... Is this the stage where the girls are going to be forgotten?” Suraj said. “I know they don’t believe in giving explanations, but explanations are very important.”
Suraj speculated that the contradictory statements perhaps reflect divisions within the Taliban as they seek to consolidate their power, with the more pragmatic within the movement losing out to hard-liners among them, at least for now.
Statements from the Taliban leadership often reflect a willingness to engage with the world, talk of open public spaces for women and girls and protecting Afghanistan’s minorities. But orders to its rank and file on the ground are contradictory. Instead of what was promised, restrictions, particularly on women, have been implemented.
Suraj, an Afghan American who returned to Afghanistan in 2003 to promote women’s rights and education, said many of her fellow activists have left the country.
Read: Friction among Taliban pragmatists, hard-liners intensifies
She said she stayed in an effort to engage with the Taliban and find a middle ground, but until now has not been able to get the hard-line Islamic group’s leadership to meet with activists who have remained in the country, to talk with women about the way forward.
“We have to talk. We have to find a middle ground,” she said.
UNESCO’s Director General Audrey Azoulay on Saturday added her voice to the growing concern over the Taliban’s limitations on girls after only boys were told to go back to school.
“Should this ban be maintained, it would constitute an important violation of the fundamental right to education for girls and women,” Azoulay said in a statement upon her arrival in New York for the opening of the U.N. General Assembly.
A former advisor to the women’s ministry under the previous Afghan government sent a video message to The Associated Press from her home in Kabul, slamming the Taliban’s move to close the ministry.
It is “the right of women to work, learn and participate in politics on the national and international stage,” said Sara Seerat. ”Unfortunately, in the current Taliban Islamic Emirate government there is no space in the Cabinet. By closing the women’s ministry it shows they have no plans in the future to give women their rights or a chance to serve in the government and participate in other affairs.”
Earlier this month the Taliban announced an all-male exclusively Taliban Cabinet but said it was an interim setup, offering some hope that a future government would be more inclusive as several of their leaders had promised.
Also on Saturday, an international flight by Pakistan’s national carrier left Kabul’s airport with 322 passengers on board and a flight by Iran’s Mahan Air departed with 187 passengers on board, an airport official said.
Read: Women in Afghanistan: Taliban Government to Ban Women's Sports in Afghanistan
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media, said the two international flights departed in the morning. The identities and nationalities of those on board were not immediately known.
The flights were the latest to depart Kabul in the past week as technical teams from Qatar and Turkey have worked to get the airport up to standard for international commercial aircraft.
A Qatar Airways flight on Friday took more Americans out of Afghanistan, the third such airlift by the Mideast carrier since the Taliban takeover and the frantic U.S. troop pullout from the country last month. The State Department said Saturday that there were 28 U.S. citizens and seven permanent residents on board the flight from Kabul, and thanked Qatari authorities for their help.
Also Friday night, a flight by Kam Air, Afghanistan’s largest private carrier, took off from Mazar-e-Sharif, the capital of northern Balkh province, with 350 passengers on board, according to two employees there.
The flight was headed to Dubai, said the two, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. They said the plane carried foreigners but it was not clear if and how many Americans were on board.
World Bank praises Bangladesh for anti-poverty social schemes
Social protection programmes remain central to Bangladesh’s sustainable development policy and are progressively benefitting the poorer households across the country.
This affirmation of poverty alleviation has come from none other than the world's top lender, the World Bank.
However, more efforts are required for further reduction of poverty in Bangladesh, according to the World Bank.
Reallocating existing transfers to the poorest in the country can help bring down poverty further -- from 36% to 12%, the global lender said in its report unveiled on Thursday.
Read:Bangladesh receives $590 million World Bank financing to tackle Rohingya situation
The report titled ‘Bangladesh Social Protection Public Expenditure Review’ reflects on Bangladesh’s continued investment towards social protection and how it can improve on its existing framework, including planning, designing, programming, and delivery of the various social protection programmes and projects.
The report finds that the social protection programmes are mostly focused in rural areas. But, with almost one in five of the urban population living in poverty, and half of the households at the risk of falling into poverty, there is a need for rebalancing geographic allocations, it suggests.
About 11% of people in urban areas are covered by social protection whereas 19% of the urban population is poor. On the contrary, the coverage in rural areas is higher than the poverty rate, with programmes reaching 36% of people, while 26% live in poverty.
Using a social registry, such as the National Household Database can improve targeting of both programmes and households at a reduced cost.
“Over the last decades, Bangladesh has expanded its coverage of social protection programmes that now reach three in every 10 households in the country,” said World Bank Operations Manager for Bangladesh and Bhutan, Dandan Chen.
Read: World Bank lifts global growth outlook to 5.6% on US, China rebounds
“The Covid-19 pandemic has accentuated the need for a more robust, efficient, and adaptive social protection system. Going forward, well-targeted and less fragmented social protection programmes that consider the demographic change, unplanned urbanization, labor market vulnerability, and frequent shocks will help the country continue with its success of poverty reduction.”
In FY 20, Bangladesh spent about 2.6% of GDP in social protection, which is in line with countries with similar income levels. However, some risk groups remain underserved, in particular there are gaps in programing for early years and for the economic inclusion of poor and vulnerable youth and adults.
For example, in every eight poor people, one is a child. Yet, the poor young children receive only 1.6% of social protection expenditures.
Spending will be more effective if the allocations are aligned with the share of the poor in different categories, and with the different functions played by programmes, according to the World Bank.
“Investing in early childhood helps a child grow healthier and be more productive in adult life and thus break the cycle of poverty across generations,” said World Bank Lead Economist and a co-author of the report, Aline Coudouel.
Read:Bangladesh inks over $1 b deal with World Bank for responding to COVID-19 pandemic
“The country has taken innovative programmes, reflecting the life cycle approach. As patterns of risk change in different phases of life, the life cycle approach needs to encompass support from pregnant mothers to old age, persons with disabilities, as well as from households facing shocks to those in chronic poverty."
To boost the quality and efficiency of service delivery, the government-to-person (G2P) and mobile financial services should be scaled up, suggests the report.
It takes about two months to transfer the funds from treasury to the beneficiary. The G2P scheme can cut processing time to 10 days.
This also needs to be paired with increased allocations for staffing, capacity-building training, including digital literacy, and improved equipment, which will facilitate enhanced implementation of programmes at the local level.