Bangladesh is home to the fourth highest number of the global extreme poor with six per cent share of the world's poor population as its poverty level is still high, a World Bank-International Monetary Fund report said.
India is home to the largest poor in the world as it has a 30 per cent share of the world's nearly 1.0 billion extreme poor, said the Global Monitoring Report (GMR) 2014-15, released by the WB-IMF in Washington on Wednesday.
The report said after India, Nigeria is the second highest poor people holder with its 10 per cent poor of the total while China is in the third position with 8.0 per cent of total share of the global poor population.
The GMR said almost three-fifths of the world's extreme poor are concentrated in just five countries Bangladesh, China, Congo, India and Nigeria. Adding another five countries (Ethiopia, Indonesia, Madagascar, Pakistan, and Tanzania) would comprise just over 70 per cent of the 1.0 billion extreme poor.
In 1990, the magnitude of extreme poverty was greatest in East Asia but today Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia account for about 80 per cent of the global poor, the WB-IMF report said.
According to the 2011 estimates, extreme poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa was around 47 per cent, it said.
The report forecast that poverty will remain stubbornly high in South Asia and Sub-Saharan African regions where an estimated 377 million of the world's 412 million poor will likely reside in 2030.
In 2011, the two regions were home to 814 million of the world's 1.0 billion poor.
Globally, extreme poverty has declined significantly. In 2011, one billion people-14.5 per cent of the world's population-could be classified as extremely poor, down from 1.25 billion or 18.6 per cent of the world's population in 2008.
The World Bank Group's interim target of reducing poverty to single digit by 2020 seems achievable, but it will not reach 3.0 per cent by 2030 without accelerating effort, the monitoring report said.
Growth is the major driver of poverty reduction, and was instrumental in halving extreme poverty between 1990 and 2010. "Unless economic growth patterns change, however, ending poverty by 2030 is unlikely to become a reality," it said.
The GMR forecast that the annual per capita consumption growth of 4.0 per cent in every country around the world, combined with no change in income distribution in each country, would result in a reduction of global poverty to about 3.0 per cent of the world's population by 2030.
Much more work needs to be done to end poverty and close the gap in living standards between those in the bottom 40 per cent and the top 60 per cent of the population around the world, the Global Monitoring Report 2014-2015 said.
The report said for the first time the World Bank Group's twin goals of ending extreme poverty by 2030 and promoting shared prosperity, measured income growth of the bottom at 40 per cent. The GMR 2014-2015 continues to monitor progress on the Millennium Development Goals, which inspired the WBG twin goals.
"The world has made great progress in the last quarter-century in reducing extreme poverty - it was cut by a stunning two-thirds - and now we have the opportunity to end poverty in less than a generation," said World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim.
"But we will not finish the job unless we find ways to reduce inequality, which stubbornly persists all over the world. This vision of a more equal world means we must find ways to spread wealth to the billions who have almost nothing."
The report noted that much success has been achieved in reducing extreme poverty -- those living on less than a $1.25 a day. "However, the number of poor remains unacceptably high, at just over 1 billion people (14 per cent of the world population) in 2011, compared with 1.2 billion (19 per cent of the world population) in 2008," it added.
BSS adds: The World Bank (WB) said Bangladesh economy would grow by 6.2 per cent at the end of the current financial year 2014-15 (FY15).
This forecast assumes continued macroeconomic stability and a boost for domestic consumption from remittances and domestic demand from public infrastructure investments.
"Regaining political stability and with a renewed focus on growth, Bangladesh is forecast to grow by 6.2 per cent in the FY2014/15," the WB said in its latest South Asia Economic Focus, which comes twice a year.
In the report, released on Monday, the WB is also highly optimistic about the inflow of remittance to the country, the life-blood of the country's balance of payment.
Regarding domestic demand, the driving force of the economic growth, the WB said infrastructure investment would "support aggregate demand".
The WB saw that the core inflation in Bangladesh actually declined as a result of better supply conditions and slower aggregate demand when the headline inflation remained stable.
The report said that the exports continued to growth at two-digit rates, and as a result the country could witness a financial account surplus in FY15, in spite of a decline in inflow of the foreign direct investment (FDI). "There was a solid performance of Bangladesh's industry, notwithstanding a slowdown from 9.6 per cent in FY2013 to 8.4 per cent in FY2014," the report said.
The WB in the report, however, brought attention to some important areas including fiscal policy, revenue shortfall and political stability.
"In Bangladesh fiscal policy remains plagued by implementation weaknesses. There was a revenue shortfall for the second year in a row, forcing a revision of targets. The shortfall was compensated by sluggish expenditure growth, although this was mainly due to poor implementation of the public investment program", the report said.
The report advised that government should prioritise the most transformative projects for completion within specified timelines. The projects include the Dhaka-Chittagong and Dhaka-Mymensingh highways, double-tracking of the Dhaka-Chittagong railway, Padma Bridge, Dhaka metro rail project and two Bibiyani gas field-based power plants.
The other major recommendations that the WB put forward in the report to accelerate economic growth include enacting the Public Private Partnership (PPP) law, awarding contracts to develop Special Economic Zones (SEZ) and completion of transformation of the garment industry.
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