Bangladesh Unnayan Parishad (BUP) on Tuesday lauded the proposed increase in gender budget allocation for fiscal year (FY) 2018-19.
It urged the government to formulate a guideline to ensure the best use of the fund.
The research organisation also placed a set of recommendations to ensure women's rights through proper implementation of gender budget.
They called for launching programmes to ensure women's access to higher education, enhance their presence in formal sector and ensure workplace safety to help them move forward.
The call came at a roundtable discussion on 'Women's status in proposed national budget for FY 2018-19', organised by the BUP at National Press Club in the city.
BUP Chairman Dr Rezaul Karim presided over the event, with Chairman of Bangladesh Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation (PKSF) Dr. Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad as the chief guest.
BUP Executive Director Dr. Nilufar Banu presented a keynote paper.
Dr. Nilufar said the proposed budget for FY 2018-19 increased gender budget allocation to Tk 1369.38 billion from Tk 1120.19 billion in the outgoing fiscal.
She said the government has also proposed an allocation of Tk 1.0 billion for creating new women entrepreneurs, in addition to Tk 250 million special fund for women's development.
But such increase in budgetary allocation solely cannot ensure women's development, she added.
"We cannot bring prosperity for women by merely increasing allocation in the gender budget, rather we need a suitable guideline to spend the money," she said.
She also said such guideline is also essential to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) within the stipulated time.
In his speech, Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad said budget proposal of a country is not merely a collection of figures, rather a guideline for social development.
"Besides economic development in the country, various sorts of inequality among the societies still prevail," he said.
He underscored the need for increasing budgetary allocation for health and education sector to help develop the country's human resources.
Taking part in open discussion, economist Hannana Begum said the country still lacks a proper guideline to monitor the expenditure from gender budget allocation.
"We expect the government would form a committee to monitor the gender budget allocation in line with the finance minister's declaration in budget speech," she added.
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