Although Bangladesh did not receive adequate financial assistance from the affluent nations, its achievements in attaining millennium development goals (MDGs) are noteworthy. The country needs more time and resources to attain the unmet MDG targets.
Economists say if the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries kept their promise of disbursing 0.7 per cent of their Gross National Income (GNI) for the poor nations, Bangladesh could make more progress than what it had achieved.
According to Bangladesh Progress Report 2013, unveiled formally at a function in the city last week, Bangladesh has met several targets of the MDGs, including reducing headcount poverty and poverty gap ratio, attaining gender parity at primary and secondary education, under-five mortality rate reduction, enrolment at primary schools, lowering infant mortality rate and maternal mortality ratio etc.
However, areas that need greater attention are hunger-poverty reduction and employment generation, increase in primary school completion and adult literacy rates, creation of decent wage employment for women.
The report said unemployment as well as underemployment is especially dominant among the young people between 15 to 24 years of age. This age group comprises nearly 18.6 per cent of the country's population and 23.3 per cent of the labour force.
Bangladesh has, indeed, demonstrated its capacity for achieving the goal of poverty reduction within the target timeframe but attaining food security and nutritional well-being still remains a challenge. The challenges with regard to reducing income inequality and the low economic participation of women also remain major concerns.
Challenges also remain in the areas of access to reproductive health and to safe water for all, as arsenic and salinity intrusion as a consequence of climate change fallout will exacerbate availability of safe water, especially for the poor.
Analysts believe that the pledge of the developed economies to help the needy ones is just a 'wishful plan'. They take great fancy in helping out the poor but do not actually do so.
On its part, Bangladesh has done much better than the other nations in respect of achieving success in MDG targets. The people are now conscious more than at any other time. The country wants to be hunger-free by 2030. It has been able to overcome the political instability in its journey towards attaining many MDG indicators.
UNDP chief in Bangladesh appeared upbeat with the performances of Bangladesh. She said Bangladesh, which has been a role model in MDG achievement globally, has laudable achievements in primary education and reducing poverty and child and maternal mortality.
But the adult literacy rate remains at a lower level as only 58.5 per cent of the total population are literate. According to the MDG target, the country was supposed to make all its population literate by 2015. The country is still falling short of the target in checking primary school level dropout rate at 3.60 per cent.
A large part of the physically and mentally-retarded children remains out of the schooling system. Improvement of quality of education is also a challenge at the primary and higher levels that need to be taken care of on a priority basis.
However, the fact remains that Bangladesh will not be able to reach some key targets of the MDGs within the 2015 deadline despite its laudable progress in achieving some of the key goals. The development partners need to help the country achieve these goals within an extended framework.
The latest official report said Bangladesh needs an amount of $78.2 billion to achieve all the indicators of MDGs (2011-15). An amount of $5.0 billion in foreign assistance is needed annually to attain general growth and $3.0 billion for higher growth. The country actually received $1.68 billion in Official Development Assistance (ODA) against the required $3.0 billion ODA annually for reaching the goals of higher growth.
Japan topped the list of countries providing aid to Bangladesh, with $348.58 million coming in fiscal 2012-13. During the same period, the United Kingdom provided $108.95 million, Germany $68.71 million, Denmark $41.42 million and South Korea $37.84 million.
Even with the success in so many sectors, Bangladesh is struggling in the areas of environment sustainability, nutrition and in certain aspects of gender equity and hunger. In fact, the country needs to develop a more open, rule-based, predictable and non-discriminatory trading and financial system to build a Global Partnership for Development which is highly essential to reach the targets.
The MDG report has indeed helped the government and the development partners realise that they need to go beyond the national averages to achieve MDG goals. Targeted strategies are required to meet specific development challenges in geographically isolated regions of the country.
Indeed, targeted development interventions and resource mobilisation by the government and the development partners are important for inclusive MDG achievement. The government needs to include these goals in the 7th Five-Year Plan for their speedy implementation.
szkhan@dhaka.net
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