Take rigorous approach to ease socioeconomic inequality

Despite Bangladesh's tremendous journey towards development since the independence, the country now requires taking rigorous approach to ease socioeconomic inequality for sustainable development, speakers said at a programme Monday.
They opined for effective policy intervention to enhance investment-to-GDP ratio, export diversification, bridging income gap, improving labour productivity and more facilitation for small and medium enterprises to avoid falling into the middle-income trap.
They also suggested better data management and analysis by the concerned authorities to get actual picture of development trajectories so that policies can be formulated to touch down development targets, specially the sustainable development goals (SDG) by 2030 and becoming a developed nation by 2041.
The views came at a launching ceremony of a book titled "Bangladesher Orthanaitik Unnayaner Gatidhara: Subarnajayantite Firay Dekha (The Trend of Bangladesh's Economic Development: Looking Back on the Moment of Golden Jubilee)". The Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) organised the event at its office in the city's Agargaon.
The book was co-authored by former special advisor (employment) of ILO Rizwanul Islam, former director general of BIDS Quazi Shahabuddin and CDER executive chairperson Rushidan I Rahman.
Planning Minister MA Mannan addressed the event as the chief guest, Economic Affairs Adviser to the Prime Minister Dr Mashiur Rahman spoke as the special guest while Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD)'s distinguished fellow Dr Mustafizur Rahman and BIDS senior research fellow Kazi Iqbal spoke as designated panellists.
Presided over by BIDS Director General Dr Binayak Sen, the programme was also addressed by BRAC governing body Chairperson Dr Hossain Zillur Rahman, CPD Distinguished Fellow Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya, Policy Research Institute (PRI) Executive Director Dr Ahsan H Mansur, former chairman of National Board of Revenue (NBR) Abdul Majid, and University Press Limited (UPL)'s Managing Director Mahrukh Mohiuddin.
In his speech, the Planning Minister Mannan welcomed the authors of the book for portraying the ins and outs of Bangladesh's development success, shortcomings of policies and way forward.
He emphasised on conducting more researches so that the country's economy can place itself in the right track to achieve the development targets.
On the open discussion, Dr Zillur said the poverty situation in the country has deteriorated during the coronavirus pandemic though there are debates about the extent of it, but it should be recognised that the poverty has increased.
"Definitely there are reports of recovery from the poverty caused by the pandemic but if the policy makers don't recognise its increase on the first place, the concept of inclusiveness in public policy won't work at expected level," he mentioned.
Referring to the book's gratitude to the resilience of the country's people specially agro-labour and expatriate workers, he said these people are among the major change makers of the country but they are often subjected to unjust distribution of public benefits.
Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya said if the poverty is calculated with only general perimeter of income, it comes down but if the multi-dimensional indicators are considered, it increases.
"According to the Khana Jarip of 2015, it was observed that the income based inequality has been increasing though we have no central data on the issue for the last seven years," he said.
Due to the sustainability and resilience of poor people, they are just surviving amid increased inequality but certainly deprived of the benefits they should have because of the development of the country, he added.
The macroeconomist also said that the people's desire to enter the middle-class group for good living standard is often deferred by lack of opportunity in education, healthcare, transport, social protection, etc.
Referring to disparity of policies, he said the government do little to prevent money laundering by affluent quarter, instead it is now allowing the launderers to bring back their money, while there has been very little done for the low- and middle-income population.
Besides, another CPD distinguished fellow, Dr Mustafizur Rahman said though there hasn't been development of another dominant labour intensive sector apart from RMG, the strength of this export sector should be explored further in various sub-sectors.
For example, as an RMG sub-sector, home-textile fetched over a US$ 1.0 billion for the first time in history, he said, adding the sector's image is globally recognised, so it should be utilised to develop clusters related the sector.

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