‘Benefits of country's dev yet to reach poor’

Despite Bangladesh's exemplary development in recent time its benefits yet not reached all sections of the public, said Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya, convenor of the Citizen's Platform for SDGs.

It has various reasons including income and expenditure inequality, inefficiency of government institutions, corruption, and lack of accountability, he said at a dialogue on "Bangladesh's Development Narrative and Parallel Realities arranged" organized by Citizen's Platform for SDGs, at the KIB Auditorium in Dhaka.

"In the last few years, an oligarchic society has emerged in the country having gathered huge wealth, and lot of political power," he said pointing to its adverse impact on the nation.

The poverty rate has decreased from 31.5 percent in 2010 to 18.7 percent in 2022, but income inequality increased by 9 percent during this period.

Only 1.31 percent of total income goes to the poorest 10 percent while 41percent to the richest 10 percent. Expenditure inequality has also increased by 4 percent in the last 12 years due to rising income inequality, he said.

Debapriya Bhattacharya said, even though all indicators including GDP, national income, export remittance, health, education have improved, but not everyone gets equal advantage of these developments.

Many are deprived of this due to sectoral, population and area based discrimination, he said adding, "Due to lack of transparency and accountability, people are not able to raise their voice about their rights."

Debapriya said there is a lot of inconsistency in some indicators of the overall national economy despite improvement. He said private sector investment remained stuck at 23 percent of GDP for several years, which is much lower than the average of 30 percent in lower middle income countries.

"Also, insulting is the allocation of less than 2 percent of GDP in the health sector, 1 percent in education, 2.52 percent in social security," he said.

Debapriya identified lack of employment, regional discrimination, violence against women, environmental hazards, inefficiency in government institutions, degradation of values and prevalence of corruption as major problems in socio-economic life.

He said due to widespread corruption and inefficiency at local level, fair use of government resources is failing.

He made 11 recommendations including democratic restoration to solve major problem adding it is necessary to ensure balanced and inclusive development.

CPD's Board of Trustee Chairman Professor Rehman Sobhan presided over the event. Core members of the citizens' platform, NGOs and private sector representatives, cultural personality also spoke on the occasion.