On child budget

About 39.7 per cent of the country's total population are under 18 years of age. If they are brought up properly, they will turn into resources for the country. Child rights activists say that the government should disaggregate budget allocations, specially for programmes that benefit children from the overall allocations made.
Budgeting for children is an analytical tool and reporting mechanism. Save the Children explains, "We propose two practical approaches that could be used to advance budgeting for children, namely how to feature children more centrally in the budget making process, and a guideline for analysing budgetary allocations for children. It will also provide analysis of the allocations to, and the allocations by, two key child-focused ministries, the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs, and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare".
The Bangladesh government currently requires its line ministries to report on how their budget allocations impact on women's advancement and poverty reduction through a narrative description, accompanied by figures, under the 'Poverty and Gender Reporting' in the Medium Term Budget Framework. There is no equivalent mandate to report on how line ministries' and institution's budgets benefit children directly and indirectly.
As such, it is not possible to ascertain whether children are adequately provided for in the budget. This lack of budgetary analyses from a child-focused perspective can result in under and/or ineffective spending on the children.
Many different ministries and agencies make and implement policies on issues that concern the rights and interests of the children, but it is difficult to determine the total allocation for child spending from the existing budget classification system.
Although still a relatively new concept, the increasing prevalence of child-focused budgeting is evidenced by relevant initiatives in diverse countries, from Brazil to Vietnam to the USA. We can set out the example of India where the budget for children disaggregates the overall budget and identifies allocations for children's issues. Through this process, the Union and State budgets in India are recalculated on the basis of child programmes.
Finance Minister AMA Muhith, in his last budget speech, assured of including child budget for FY 2015-16. His assurance has been translated into reality and currently the child budget is being piloted in five ministries-Health and Family Welfare, Education, Primary and Mass Education, Social Welfare and Women and Children Affairs.     
Sultan Ahmed
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