World Bank Praises Bangladesh Poverty Reduction

Dhaka, Bangladesh | January 05, 2009 by D-8 Secretariat

Bangladesh is continuing poverty reduction programs in 2009

Natural disasters and a spike in food prices have been setbacks for impoverished Bangladesh’s “encouraging” progress toward halving poverty by 2015, the World Bank said.

Annual economic growth running at 6 percent for the past few years has reduced the percentage of people living on $1 a day to 40 percent from 49 percent in 2000 but gains have recently faltered, the Washington-based lender said in a report released Sunday.

“Recent shocks to the Bangladeshi economy in the form of natural disasters and rising food prices have partially dampened the rapid progress in reducing poverty,” the report said.

A severe cyclone last year killed more than 3,000 people and caused massive damage to crops and infrastructure just as the country was recovering from monsoon floods. Floods and cyclones are common to this low-lying delta nation.

The report also said the more than 20 percent rise in food prices eroded some of the gains from economic growth and slowed the pace of poverty reduction.

Rising labor wages and an increasing flow of remittances sent by Bangladeshis working abroad have also helped reduce poverty in recent years.

More than 5 million Bangladeshis employed overseas send home about $8 billion (euro6.3 billion) a year and most of these migrants are from the poor families, according to the government.

The World Bank’s Bangladesh representative, Xian Zhu, said it’s encouraging that Bangladesh is on track to attain most of the Millennium Development Goals — eight development targets adopted by 189 nations at a United Nations summit in 2000.

“Still malnutrition remains unacceptably high which may have been worsened by recent food price shock,” he said.

The report calls for maintaining the economic growth and creation of jobs to speed up poverty reduction.

It estimates that around 2.2 million new jobs will need to be created per year over the next decade — twice the rate of job creation between 2000-2005.

“This is both a challenge for Bangladesh, but also an opportunity since the new income earners can contribute significantly to overall poverty reduction,” said the report.

In line with one of the result from D-8 6th Summit in KL earlier this month, where the head of states of D-8 pledged their readiness to deal with the global challenges regarding with the skyrocketing food prices, and poverty alleviation, D-8 voiced its appreciation to the attention World Bank gave to Bangladesh. “Bangladesh has been faced fiercely against the rising food prices, inflation, and food availability, and it is our utmost concern to help her fight it through our cooperation at D-8” said Secretary General Dipo Alam yesterday in his office.

As known, D-8 has identified some potential cooperation to combat the rising food prices threat, as discussed among D-8 head of states in 6th Summit, which includes :

* To develop some fertilizer and pesticide plants in D-8 countries, and apply Preferential Trade Agreement for exporting and importing the products to ease D-8 farmers to produce more food products and the supply;
* To develop cooperation on animal feed factory within D-8 countries; and apply Preferential Trade Agreement for exporting and importing the products;
* To establish a Seeds Bank in D-8 Countries for enough seeds stock whenever are needed for increasing more food products within the countries, as well as a ready stock whenever needed by farmers because of natural disasters, and other unfortunate situation;
* To establish D-8 Food Fund for helping the needy on the food within D-8 countries caused by current unfortunate situation in food crisis time;
* To set up an R&D and technological cooperation in the areas of agricultural development, especially to increase the productivity both in inland-farming and agro-based industry;
* To cooperate for diversifying agricultural products supply, including fishery; animal husbandry; and organic products;
* To establish capacity building, including education and training program; and
* To establish a public-private partnership, by involving more private sectors participation in the programs.

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