Bangladesh has the chance to become a model for the world in reducing poverty by building on its experience of overseas employment, women’s work in the garment industry and social protection programmes, Rashed Al Mahmud Titumir, the prime minister’s adviser on finance and planning, has said.
He was speaking on Friday at a regional conference at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, organised jointly by the university’s faculty of economics and Oxfam in Asia ahead of the annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The conference discussed ways of reducing inequality in Asia through public services and social protection.
The adviser said social protection should not stop at cash support; it should be linked to productive investment, job creation and higher incomes, and designed around the needs people have at different stages of life. He said existing safety-net programmes are poorly coordinated, so that many who qualify are left out while some who do not qualify receive benefits.
According to an estimate cited in his presentation, between 7 million and 10 million people newly fell into poverty during the pandemic. He also described the government’s Family Card programme, under which public money is to be paid digitally and directly to women.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report